When I started this website, it was difficult to decide what perspective I wanted to write from. I knew I wanted to write as a creative outlet and I knew I wanted to force myself to continue exploring conscious concepts as a part of my own journey. But who did I want to write as? Did I want to be an impersonal thought process – a voice nestled in concepts that appeared out of nowhere and only used logic and reason to come to new conclusions? Or did I want to be me, the actual human being writing these words, the person who has to lay down at night and live with the voice inside my own head.
I couldn’t talk about existential dread without being the latter. Existential dread has run my life far before I even knew what I was experiencing. Growing up in a conservative Christian home, I grew up telling myself that I would be a missionary. My devotion to God was passionate, mature and seemingly never ending. Yet even with unwavering faith, I had a fear that poisoned my heart. Most nights, as young as age 7, after I thanked the Lord for everything I had and asked him to help my friends and family, I had only one thing I begged for: please, Lord, don’t send me to Hell. I would let hot tears run down my face as I begged for his mercy and grace. Here I was, living in so many ways the best life I knew how from my little understanding of the world, and the thought of eternal punishment began to take over my life. Some nights I would just stare at the ceiling and let the thoughts of Hell absorb my being until I got nauseated.
I could never fathom any concept being more truly terrifying to my soul than Hell. What could ever be worse? I remember talking to a friend years later and telling her how simple it must be to think about death as an atheist. An eternal rest? Psh, easy peasy.
Then I grew up, I began to question what gave this one book put together by other mere humans divine meaning. The things my church told me and the things I observed no longer matched. Before I knew it, my faith was gone. I tried to grasp onto it, but it slipped through my fingers faster than I knew how to handle. The pain was agonizing. The biggest change this made was the only truly permanent one – death. Death had an entirely new meaning. And the moment I realized that ‘nothingness’ would be my eventual ending, it took over.
At first I didn’t realize what was happening. Thoughts of death seeped into my days even when I was happy, with friends, at the movie theater, driving, sober, drunk, it didn’t matter. I could be in the middle of a stimulating conversation and I would recognize the pit at the bottom of my stomach, “You will stop existing. Everything that you’ve known, everything that comes after you, it will be gone.”
Once it became clear that these intrusive thoughts were here to stay, I first tried to battle them head on. I bought books, I wrote my thoughts down, I tried to talk with friends, I tried to out reason my fear by recognizing how absurd it is to obsess over the one thing that in no way, shape or form I can stop. But that was the part of it all that always drew me back in. I could do nothing. I was utterly and completely helpless. It doesn’t matter what I create, who I connect with, what I discover, I will end. I am only an observer of a cold universe that has no interest in keeping me around.
To Be Continued
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