Ever since I was a child I was afraid of getting older and dying. It has been in the back of my mind for most of my life.

I had phases were this fear was not really around and then phases where it is the only thing I can think of. Ever since Corona it has gotten worse and worse. It just struck me one day while playing video games with my friends. Suddenly I was like "I WILL die one day. I will not be anymore ... forever. I won't even know that I am not anymore." and I broke down pretty much immediately.

What followed was a phase of everlasting fear and anxiety. It was so bad that I just couldn't fall asleep unless I watched comedy until was physically not able to stay awake. Back then I thought it was a result of the isolation of Corona. Since then I moved back in with my mother (due to different reasons). Everything was fine for a while but now it is back.

I should be happy. I handed in my bachelor's thesis a while back, will soon move out again and have gotten a job in my dream career. I finished my therapy and while I am still not completely over my social anxiety but it is getting better and better. And yet the fear was never as bad. Last night I cowered into a ball under my desk and started crying.

It has gotten to a point were I thought about killing myself to end it. It is the same result either way. I won't remember anything anyway. Even the pain and grief friends and family would feel is only temporary. They too will be gone with everything that made them up one day.

I have no intentions of going through with it but it frightens me that I even think like this.

I don't know were this is coming from. Maybe from the feeling that I am wasting my life, that I am a failure and too far behind peers, that I am too old to have so little but I also know that it's not like I could have done a lot better. Due to circumstances outside of my own control I am were I am right now but I am doing my best to get better. It's just that it takes a lot of time and I fear that it takes too much time. I also lost a good friend recently so this probably plays into it as well.

Is there anyway of changing my way of thinking about death? I know I can't change the fact that I will die but how can I accept it without falling into existential nihilism like I currently am?

Edit: I also already called my therapist but since it's the weekend they won't answer before Monday.

  • QueerCommie@lemmygrad.ml
    ·
    1 year ago

    I disagree with this type of answer. I was trying to come up with a way to respond last time the topic came up and now I think I have. Death is a part of life. All things created must be destroyed. Negation of the negation, dialectics.

    Let us not, however, flatter ourselves overmuch on account of our human victories over nature. For each such victory nature takes its revenge on us.

    -Friedrich Engels, The Part played by Labour in the Transition from Ape to Man

      • QueerCommie@lemmygrad.ml
        ·
        1 year ago

        I don’t see immortality as either a worthy venture, nor something that is likely possible. Mortality gives life meaning. I’m sure if we were somehow immortal there would be negative unforeseen consequences. It is not desirable to conquer nature, but to live in harmony with it. That’s why I quoted Engels. Sickness will always be a part of life, but it has been and will be limited.

          • QueerCommie@lemmygrad.ml
            ·
            1 year ago

            Humanity finds its own meanings of life. Mortality both makes things seem meaningless and gives meaning, another contradiction. Struggle is certainly a way of finding meaning. I think the drab proletarian life and the crushing force of capitalist realism is largely at fault for the meaningless in this society.

            Now I’m wondering whether this debate is worth having at all. I guess it is as some find false hope in immortality instead of coming to terms with their own death. Regardless, immortality is certainly unfeasible within the foreseeable future, so we might as well come to terms with death. I don’t know if I’ll convince you, but I’ve said what I have to say.

            Edit: I forgot to add Albert Camus’ famous analogy of Sisyphus being like the proletarian who daily works at something of which it’s products are not their own. Also, like the human who’s work on earth will never be complete at death. We are capable of finding purpose in such an absurd scenario. “One must imagine Sisyphus happy.”