No one can comfort me this time, running their hands down my arms as if to warm them and whispering, “Shh, it’ll be alright.” No one can assure me that what I’m afraid of is just a child’s fable, or a bedtime story told by sadistic nannies. No one can tell me that my biggest fear resides only in the eerily deserted rain forests, where I’ll probably never go. Because what I’m afraid of is inevitable.
I’m afraid of being dead. No, not dying; at least then I’m partially alive, still holding hands with the people I’ve grown to adore. At least when I’m dying I’ll still be awake, part of the colorful visions that might just be in my head. But when I’m dead, what is there? Is it endless darkness? Will I be born again just seconds after my life is over? Will I burn in the endless flames I’ve heard about without fail, or reside in the perfect nothingness? Shall my troubled soul be stuck in this world, haunting the dreams of the living children I glare at so enviously?
To be honest, even more frightening to my mind is the thought I will do nothing to be remembered by. Maybe I’ll ride out my days retired, living in the countryside home I presently have nightmares about, not fantasies. There’s a chance I’ll be stuck as a stay at home mom, even worse a lonely, eccentric old woman working nine-to-five, still too poor to even wager for retirement. If we do only get one chance at life, I’m afraid I’ll waste it like a package of raspberries, hidden in the back of the fridge.
Or perhaps I will go down in history, the most brilliant writer to have ever walked the face of the planet, as my wildest dreams allow. Maybe the high school students alike myself will see my picture in the midst of their American history textbooks, and then they’ll write papers on me. It could be that I’ll become nothing more than a piece of fiction, overused in movies and overhyped in novels, the way my brain forces me to think of other parts of the past.
And maybe I’m not scared of any of this. Maybe the only thing that makes my stomach twist and gripe in the middle of the night is the thought I’ll lose myself in this world, leave all my ambition behind and forget this part of me ever existed.
…
I’ll think myself raving mad someday, I swear.