40

here was my thought process:
I looked at myself in the mirror while I brushed my teeth and I thought
“I look bad, sick, deeply sick”
I went to bed
I thought about how my period was very late
I thought about the sharp constant cramping in my lower left side
I thought “oh my god, I have cancer”
“the cancer is all over my body”

the reality cascades

“it has been spreading all this time, and I have just been ignoring it because I know
that I’m a hypochondriac and I’m trying to move away from that and just let my body
Experience Pain without Judging the Pain”
“I am dying”
“I have been dying for a while”
“I feel funny right now, my heart is beating very fast”
“it’s just anxiety/panic attack, it will be okay. be rational”
“but my legs also feel extremely heavy and my head hurts and I’m getting random chest pain”
“dear god, I’m going to die tonight. I’m dying”

there’s an animal outside my window making a horrifying, threatening, very loud noise, repeatedly. I have never heard this noise and cannot even speculate what type of animal it is. but I feel that death is very near

“my throat is closing”

looking out the window I see no animal, just darkness and some puddles reflecting light on route nine

“it’s all so far away from me”
“I have been in the process of dying and I am entering the final stages. I will only be diagnosed with the cancer after it kills me, but I have had some sort of innate knowledge of it for months, I bet. I wonder if anyone else has ever suddenly died from cancer”

I think of the show “I didn’t know I was pregnant”
I feel some kind of Base Self slip out from underneath me and I feel insane
I feel like this mental state is the closest I have ever come to ‘intolerable,’
like it is setting a precedent i never wanted to know about
and i wonder if i can ever come back

want to live so much but want to escape impending death
and the only way to do that is to die
want to die to escape any knowledge of death,
want it to be so sudden that I am here and then I am gone and there is
no interim of terrible awareness

feel more alone than ever
want someone next to me, telling me repeatedly that I am not dying
want them to love me
even if they felt so far away, too
“should I wake up one of my housemates”
“should I drive to the hospital”
“should I call my mom”
“is anybody else as fucked up or dying as I am”
“is everybody pretending they are at  peace with the fact that they are going to die,
so they can seem ‘spiritually advanced’”
“do the people who are ‘at peace’ with death have a more shallow understanding
of death than I do, do their brains not grasp it fully”
“they have not had their very consciousness shaped by knowledge of mortality”
“they have never had a near death episode”
“near death episodes negate all hope unless your brain is kind enough to conjure
hallucinations of a heaven you were taught, and then you write a book about it and
my mom probably has it on her bed”

remember arguing with my sister about the existence of a soul, and how I don’t
believe in one (I’ve had general anesthesia)
she said “but you still have a soul even if you’re ‘out’ for surgery, you’re still there”
I said “no, you’re really not. you just Aren’t, you  are truly Dead”
she seemed frustrated with me
she seemed sad
that I believe what I believe

seems like I’m dying less for the moment
doesn't seem reasonable to pass away once the sun has risen
doesn't seem reasonable to pass away once the sun has risen
hello, yes, I won’t be coming into work this morning