I feel like I've had that pent up for some time. And thoughts that I generate are like bile. Waste. It's good to get them out before I poison myself... which has happened before. One of my peculiarities is that I can't think about death. Not for long, anyway. And not abstractly. I can look at a tombstone and think, "Oh, that guy's dead." No problem. But the moment I start to dwell on death it gets to me. I hyperventilate. I look around nervously, half hoping/dreading a psychiatrist will come running up with his burly orderlies, who then descend upon me, restraining me and taking me to happy land with a strategic shot of morphine... come to think of it, that whole fantasy could probably use a psychiatric evaluation. Maybe I have submissive tendenci- NO. NO SELF-EVALUATIONS, DAMN IT!
Anyway... where was I? Ah, yes. This phobia of death started when I was six or seven. My parents aren't religious... well, that's not completely true. My mom converted to Judaism to appease my father's mother, but she's really a big fan of Jesus. And my father... he's an enigma. Some days he's a deist. Sometimes he's an agnostic. Often he'll mention his theory that when we die we'll all end up in some spirit well, like a deranged hippie's wet dream come to fruition. And sometimes he's Friedrich Nietzsche. So I had no tangible sense of God. I just knew what I saw was real, and anything that was outside my range of knowledge either didn't exist or just plain sucked, like the Easter Bunny or the Baltimore Orioles. And I'd go about my day without a care in the world. I saw friends, "learned" in school, ate the food presented before me with nary a complaint... but then night fell, and shit suddenly got real.
I can't pinpoint the exact moment this happened, or what might have cause my little mind to wander into the deep end of the asinine knowledge pool. I crawled into bed one night, per custom, and my parents tucked me and did their nightly ritual of shooing bad thoughts away by rubbing my head like some kind of shaman couple. Then they left and it was just me. Alone. In the dark. Nothing new. But I couldn't fall right asleep. So I thought about girls (AND HOW FUCKING ICKY THEY ARE. AM I RIGHT, FELLAS?), my favorite movies, what kind of mischief I'd get into after school the next day. But then my thoughts landed squarely on the subject of death. The big dirt nap. The final Sonata. And I soon grew... unsettled. Nervous.
Here is pretty much how it went down in my head: *Why am I so scared? I mean, when I die, I get to go to Heaven and see all my relatives. And I'll be there forever and ever and -* AWWW SHIT. Eternity wasn't sounding so hot to little Jake(Reference to youthful Jake or my penis. Your choice). *Whoa. Forever? Won't I get bored? Won't time lose all meaning? Won't I get sad? No, I'll be happy... some freakish smile forced onto my face for all time.* OH FUCK OH FUCK OH FUCK. Shit's getting real. I'm getting too close to my own Socratic Truth too young. I'm not ready for this. *And... will my pets go to Heaven? What about my friends that believe in different gods? What about them? What if I don't get in? What if I just live forever? What if I die and it's just darkness?* NAH. NAH. STOP. At that point I became inconsolable. I asked my parents to give me an answer. They couldn't. They weren't going to sit there and lie to me. I mean, my mother believes in this stuff. And if it brings you comfort to believe in God, I have no qualms with you. But my father didn't want to bullshit me. He just told me that eventually I'll figure it out myself.
And I did. I mean, as much as one can. I dismissed the concept of God around the age of 17. Up until then I was a deist... but even then I couldn't come to terms with the idea of eternity... whether it was spent in a glorious kingdom, Detroit, or eternal darkness. I still have trouble. I just figure I'll do what good I can while I'm here and hope I leave a mark. My own little slice of immortality without having to be around to suffer it.
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