Have you ever had a crippling fear? Something that terrified you to your very core, and whenever you thought about it, you actually felt physically ill? I try not to be scared of too many things. A woman has to be tough in this society. Sure, I'm afraid of things not happening for me in life. Everybody fears that. But the one thing that is my Achille's Heel is death.
Part of it is because I'm not certain there is a heaven. I've had too many unanswered prayers to trust fully in a higher power. What if life on earth is it, and after we die our souls cease to exist? That's scary enough for me (I'm shaking as I write this), but what if there really is eternity? The idea of forever scares me too. A ceaseless existence? I don't know what to feel or believe, and the fact that I don't know yet scares me too.
Sometimes I'm able to push my fears back, and sometimes they don't even come to mind at all, but when they do, I literally feel like I can't function. I know this is not normal. Will I someday come to terms with dying, or will I, in my final moments, say what Joan Crawford said as her housekeeper prayed over her: "Don't you dare ask Him for help!"
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It's interesting you posted this, because just last night I was having the opposite conversation with myself. I'm at the point in my life where I'm basically terrified of everything but death. It upsets me to think of how my family would feel if I were to suddenly fall over dead, but the idea of death itself no longer frightens me at all.
ReplyDeleteI don't know if I believe in an afterlife, but as someone who has spent way too long studying everything I can get my hands on about ghosts (and one of my hobbies is reading reincarnation stories told by very young children), I think that some part of us sticks around in some form.