You Are Not Dead Yet

It's time you start acting like it.

Photo: Martin Diegor

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I summon myself. Like a ghost.

When I rise, I raise my phone. Eyes blinking and blurry, to begin the escape. The tumble into the non-tangible. The non-existent. The internet, only by this acknowledgment, becomes the world. The world I have to wake up and immediately say hello to.

That could be why my brain is dense with fog from the moment the day starts. The moment I rise I am not in my body. Though, I may have a few dreams floating in my limbs that I still need to shake out. I live half in them and half in reality until my brain forgoes them. Until they become back-washed memories. Things you spit out easily because you didn’t actually experience them. If only everything you didn’t experience could that easily remove itself.

I don’t know why I’m so afraid of dying but it’s something that plagues me every day. Some days more than others. Lately, it has been every day. It could be the ongoing dialogue of mortality due to the longevity and intensity of this pandemic. It could be that every time I log onto Twitter and see a trending name there’s a high probability that it’s because they’ve passed away. It could also be because my life has grown stagnant and trying to figure out a future in this climate appears futile.

It feels like death is all around us. Not only impending non-existence but the death of what we thought our lives could be. I’m sorry to remind you of it, but it was only a matter of time until I did. I tried to hide it in verbose language and tucked away imagery. But, almost everything I write holds a glint of it.

Though, as I was writing the other night something interesting happened. I ended up addressing my future self. Unintentionally. It wasn’t an exercise in manifestation or spirituality. It was simply a way to work through and relieve some of this anxiety.

That if I could somehow talk to myself in this figurative future tense and give her something that is of right now, that is literal, that maybe that could prove she will still exist. If I chart myself a path with these words straight into my future, hopefully, I can meet myself there. Still. Even through all of this.

There’s nothing particularly terrifying happening in my life right now and I’m so grateful for the conditions I am in, all things considered. It just seems that the circumstances our generation is being put through are exponentially damaging to my fragile mental psyche. And I need to talk about it. But, I need to talk about it in a way that isn’t as scary as everyone else is making it out to be. Well, no, it is scary — but I need hope. I can’t just write about everything ending, I just know there has to be some light under the crack of this door.

I put my head down and close my eyes and imagine that light hitting me.

You have to be alive to feel something like that. You just have to be alive.

I remind myself. I am still alive. I am still breathing. What will I do with this breath? Because sitting here and rummaging through thoughts is doing nothing for me. It is doing nothing to save me from this unease. I have come here to prove that I’m alive. That I’ll be bringing something into my future. That we don’t know at all where we’re headed or if we’ll have the grace of promised life again. But, what I won’t do is sit here and disintegrate as the world breaks its promises. I have to make use of what life is around me. To carry, to give, and to prove to her. To me. That future self. That we made something while we are here.

That we became something.

I’m trying. I’m really trying my best. I trimmed the fat of a lot of my dreams so that I am living mostly in my essence. That is one thing I am thankful for in this climate. The clarity to see what really matters. Though fearfully, I don’t do much else with these revelations. I don’t share enough with you here. I stop myself from following through with projects I sorely believe in. Action feels implausible. How can I see a future for which I am not granted? I grow infected by the thought of this erasure of my life.

Then, I remember, as any woman does, there are births to be made. Regardless. There is a capacity of life that can grow within me. Yes, in a child, but what I really mean is in anything. That I can channel this life energy that generates within me. I can de-fumigate the death that suffocates the air by retrieving its only nemesis. It’s sister sign. With what is left of me, I can breathe lives.

Though a future is not promised it is still worthy enough to give. To at least instill in us some kind of reassurance that if we have something to carry, room will be made. Time will be ushered. That life continues on as we continue to create it.

That death is not a premonition but a sense of rest.

That if we hurl so much life from what we are given — in the end, we are given peace.