I'm Afraid of Dying
I’m Afraid of Dying
When I was a kid, I used to read everything I could find at the library. I would check out so many books at a time, that I couldn’t hold them properly in two hands. I needed to balance the top end of the stack pressed up against the underside of my chin, my hands curled around either side of the bottom end, the entire stack collapsing the instant that I let go. Then, at home, I would read them one at a time, typically going through a book in a day - sometimes multiples in one day.
I quickly churned through all the kids books. I started reading the young adult section, and churned through that too. I went through all the Animorphs books (hell yeah) and everything else I could get my hands on. I read through each of the Harry Potter books a minimum of five times each (admittedly there were only like three of them at the time).
Eventually, I was forced to branch outwards by my boredom. I found a series of light horror young adult novels, which I began to dig into. I don’t remember the name of the series or much that happened in it - it’s definitely not one of the more popular series like Goosebumps, and I’m pretty sure the entire thing is lost to time.
I began churning through those books too, except that at some point, I read some kind of story about ghosts and zombies or something silly like that, and I hit a wall - for the first time in my life, I considered mortality.
The Truth
The truth was that I had never been much for religion, and from a young age I had always been somewhat of a natural atheist despite all the mass my parents dragged me to, all the religious rituals I was brought to participate in. I think my parents hoped that sooner or later, repetition would make it stick - it never really did. Which is why, at around ten years old, considering mortality seriously for the first time, I began to feel a terrible churning feeling in the pit of my stomach.
If I didn’t believe in religion, and didn’t believe in an afterlife, then what did I believe would happen to my consciousness when I died? I didn’t have an answer, and every time tried to think about it, all that happened was that I felt more and more sick to my stomach until I couldn’t think about it anymore.
For days I was very upset, obsessing about death. When my parents asked me what was wrong, it was hard to explain why I was afraid of dying - in part because I didn’t believe in their afterlife, their perfect and easy solution for the problem, and I didn’t want to argue about faith with my extremely Catholic parents.
I spent years and years running away from this feeling. I realized at some point that if I kept myself busy - always, all the time, always focusing on something or another - I could distract myself from it. I have always tended to throw myself into “forever projects” - projects so large and impossible in scope that they would never, realistically speaking, be complete. I needed to 100% complete video games even if this meant thousands of hours invested - I needed to read entire book series that I hated just because I had started them - I tried making a video game at the age of twelve, and I decided that I wanted to be an author at the age of thirteen, complete with a long and convoluted concept for a 15-volume novel.
I have always thrown myself fully and completely into my work, into my projects, as a way of losing myself. I often spend years engaged in one task, just to give it up immediately halfway complete and then move on to the next one. I’ve always moved not because I enjoy things, but because I feel vaguely compelled to do things, just to be able to say that I’ve done them. I am always demanding everything from myself - taking on every project, juggling every possibility. If I juggled enough things, I never had to stop moving. If I never stopped moving, I would never have to consider my own mortality, or admit that I was afraid, existentially afraid, of dying.
The Recovery
At one point in university around the age of twenty one, I got very, very drunk. In between retching in the toilet and being cared for by my ex, I began to babble about death. Not about death, exactly, but about Death, in particular, with a capital D. The personification, the concept of death. He didn’t appear to me as a grim reaper, or as a skeleton, or anything like that. I perceived of it as a void, like a hole. It was located somewhere between the toilet and the wall. In between throwing up the contents of my stomach, I communed with Death.
I don’t really remember anything beyond that. I don’t think I really came to any enlightenment. There was no clarity of realization. There was no change in my philosophy of life. But something in me was changed - I was less afraid. Not “unafraid” precisely - I still feel that same feeling in the pit of my stomach if I think about dying too hard. But some edge had been taken off the obsession, it didn’t feel as bad. When everyone asked me about what had happened that night and the weird things I had said, I would just say “I met Death” with a joking smile and refuse to say anything more, waving off the conversation. But I really had met Death. Something had changed.
Suicidal Ideation
At the age of sixteen I almost committed suicide. This is well-documented elsewhere, and I don’t feel like rehashing it here. I flipped a coin to decide whether or not to go through with it, and the result of this was that I developed a new kind of passion for life. I got into lifting weights as a way to recover from this period of depression and anxiety, and it was crucial for my eventual recovery. As a side effect, I became more interested in the concept of self-improvement as a whole.
I think that this was, in many ways, another way of fleeing from the concept of death. I was so afraid of dying, but at the same time I had been keenly aware that if I died, and my brain no longer functioned, I would no longer be around to have these fears. Paradoxically, it had been my greatest and most animating fear, but I also saw it as the perfect solution.
I devoted myself to fitness in a rabid, obsessional sense. I did endless workouts and constantly spent days looking online for more and more optimal strategies. Fundamentally it’s silly, but I believed something very stupid and very human - that if I could exercise enough, I could live forever. It seemed more possible as an immature teenager - I had a whole lifetime ahead of me, I was only getting fitter every year, and I had no evidence that this would ever change. It seemed like I could simply exercise and diet perfectly and live forever - or at the very least, I could keep myself alive long enough for anti-aging technology to develop and get me the rest of the way.
This initial motivation began to shift at some point. Certainly, I stopped believing in any literal sense that I could live forever. I got older, and started to experience real human difficulties. I went through dark phases and happy phases. I realized that I was not, like I wanted to believe, somehow unique or magically capable of effecting my will on the world.
The Infinite Project
I think at some point, it became less about living forever, and more about “living forever” in a more figurative sense. It became a new infinite project, another way of running from death. If I could LIVE enough - then I might never DIE - in the sense that Elvis lives on, or Marx, or Jesus. If I made a big enough mark on the world, I might be dead, but at least people might remember me for centuries.
I wanted to be a novelist to write genius brilliant novels. I wanted to exercise to become the healthiest and strongest person who ever lived. I dreamed of writing so beautiful that it inspired vast shifts in modern philosophy, the founding of new humanist religions. I wanted to be known. In this way, I could make peace with Death. If I was big enough, nothing could ever take me.
And to a great extent, I’m still like this. I know what I’m doing now. I’m trying to relax, I’m trying to get away from it. But deep down, a part of me still feels this way. I feel infinitely older, but also I still feel like a child, attached to the same obsessions, refusing to move on.
I need to learn to slow down. I need to learn to just sit with myself and my thoughts. I need to make true peace with Death.
COVID
The pandemic was a step back. Obsessions building on obsessions again. The fear that Death was growing closer, was hovering at the edges of my vision when I didn’t want it to be. The world closing in. I threw myself into new obsessions - a youtube channel, more writing, more projects, more things to take up all my time. I took on too much work, and became overbalanced. I became too obsessed with staying inside, and withdrew into myself in many ways.
It was both terrifying and comforting, just like Death always has been. I was deathly afraid of dying, and it felt very possible like it might happen any day.
Death
I still dream about it sometimes, Death with a capital D. I don’t know if I was drunk and stupid, or if I really experienced something true, or what. But I dream about it sometimes, that void waiting just beyond the edge of consciousness.
And the thing is - I’m afraid of it when I’m far away, but when I’m up close - it doesn’t look like much of anything at all. We chat and have little conversations. We’re friends. There’s nothing else to do, nothing else to say.
Each year I get a bit older, and I get a bit closer to Death. And each year, I feel a bit more comfortable about this fact - a bit more comfortable with what I’ve accomplished, a bit less concerned that I haven’t done enough.
I am enough - and my death is enough. I hope you remember me kindly when I’m gone.
About Adam Fisher
Adam is an experienced fitness coach and blogger who's been blogging and coaching since 2012, and lifting since 2006. He's written for numerous major health publications, including Personal Trainer Development Center, T-Nation, Bodybuilding.com, Fitocracy, and Juggernaut Training Systems.
During that time he has coached hundreds of individuals of all levels of fitness, including competitive powerlifters and older exercisers regaining the strength to walk up a flight of stairs. His own training revolves around bodybuilding and powerlifting, in which he’s competed.
Adam writes about fitness, health, science, philosophy, personal finance, self-improvement, productivity, the good life, and everything else that interests him. When he's not writing or lifting, he's usually hanging out with his cats or feeding his video game addiction.
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