Thanatophobia

Photo by Guillaume de Germain on Unsplash

Today I noticed that I would rather just lie in bed than get up and do anything, even if it’s something I want to do. Actually, I feel this way almost every day of my life, it’s just that today I had to notice it, because I know it’s my fear of death that’s causing me to put a pause on living. And I want that to stop.

Here’s some random information about me that may not seem important, but it all is to me: I’m only 18. I’m taking a gap year between high school and college. I’ve only ever worked for people who know my family, and it’s never been a full-time job. After years of trying to get professional help, I now have a therapist, and as of this past Thursday, I’ve seen her three times. Also, after years of longing for straight teeth, I finally have braces for my top teeth, even though orthodontists say I really have a jaw problem that I might have to fix sooner or later. I went with later because I really just wanted straight teeth, not to have to eat out of a straw and talk through my teeth for weeks. And I don’t have my driver’s license yet…truth be told, I don’t even have my permit. I came close, but the DMV, no matter where you live, just does not care what days they randomly close on. They don’t really care that it’s actually an inconvenience.

And really, no one does.

High school was a major inconvenience for me. I sort of homeschooled for one year, but I was off the map and didn’t really do a whole lot, and I was severely depressed. Then I enrolled in an International Baccalaureate school in my sophomore year because they would gladly take my parents’ money, and we didn’t ask any questions about what “IB” really meant.

In the IB, I felt anxiety every day as soon as I woke up because there was always something looming over my head. Always.

The last two years of this magical IB program are the years that count into getting the IB diploma, along with a regular high school diploma. The thing about the IB diploma is that it’s really hard to get. In fact, from my high school, around 30% or less of the graduates every year actually get this extra diploma to brag about. But regardless of the end result, each student has the same amount of work hanging over their heads for two years. Two Freaking Years.

Even on Saturdays, the days I swore to never do school work, it would always be in the back of my mind. Because it’s there, every single day, for two years until you finally graduate, and even then, there’s no guarantee that you will get this magical IB diploma, but you will for sure get swollen stress veins.

It’s easy to see why I didn’t enjoy being awake for the entirety of my high school experience, and I guess that’s normal, no matter what curriculum your school uses. Every person in other high schools that I met felt the exact same way.

But then there came to be a point in time when I thought I was going to die. And that really just made me want to stay in bed.

In 2017, Hurricane Irma hit the island of St. Thomas, which was where I had been living for five years. I was lucky to get off island before Hurricane Maria hit, but Irma had already damaged my mind. Although I was probably the luckiest person I knew during that time — the house I stayed in during the hurricane only shook once or twice and had a small leak — I thought about death at least once every single day after that. I convinced my parents to let me stay in my hometown for the first semester, and convinced my teachers that I could keep up with schoolwork over email. I know I made the right decision, because when I talked with my classmates in second semester, they told me that they had received a ton of work right after the hurricanes because they were so behind, and I’m guessing it was work that the teachers didn’t think of sending to me.

Despite knowing how lucky I was, I was back to being severely depressed and anxious about keeping up with schoolwork. In reality, I wasn’t nearly as behind as I thought I was. But I wasn’t convinced, because I knew how much was due at the end of the entire year. I kept thinking ahead, and that was all I could see. The end of the tunnel that you’re supposed to see in your senior year had collapsed right before my eyes. I had somehow convinced myself that I would die young, perhaps even before I could graduate high school.

Oddly enough, when I returned for second semester, I felt some peace that I hadn’t felt the entire time in my hometown. I’m guessing it was because I knew it would be easier to know if I was caught up on schoolwork. It also probably had something to do with seeing the island look all green once more. And once again, I was far luckier than my classmates, because both my parents’ apartments had both electricity and Wi-Fi, which most kids didn’t have.

And I still hated waking up.

Then there was the Gun March.

I’ve always been a rather angry teenager. My dad called me “disturbingly jaded” once, and it’s true. I’ve never felt “young,” meaning I’ve never felt like I wasn’t supposed to know something that was “advanced.” I’ve never thought that it was unusual for me to experience intense emotions that supposedly only adults could experience. I’ve never thought my opinion wasn’t valid, for better or worse. And the Gun March only made me angrier…but not for the reasons you’d expect.

I don’t know how Gun Marches went on in other high schools. But I remember mine well, and not in a good way.

There was a camera crew from I can’t remember what morning show, and they filmed our Gun March. We the students were vaguely told what to do, what sign to hold, how to act in front of the cameras. And then later we were called leaders…for doing something that we were told to do.

I was angry that my school had used a tragedy for its own personal publicity stunt.

To clarify something, I do believe in background checks before giving someone a gun. I do believe in making it harder to attain a gun. But I do not believe that “guns are the culprit,” as one student’s speech said. I believe that guns are easy-to-use instruments in carrying out what a sick person wants to do. Therefore, I strongly believe in making mental health just as much of a priority as gun control laws. And most people would agree with me. But would they really do anything to make mental health a priority for their students or their employees?

As much as I’d love to believe that, I don’t think so. It’s hard to change an entire curriculum, or all the various deadlines for all the various assignments within a company. Who cares about mental health when you’re failing out of school? Who cares if you need help when you have to prioritize your job before your life?

Something that really stuck out to me at the “March” (we didn’t march, we just sat down) was this one woman talking about how traumatized her daughter was because some of her friends were killed in a school shooting.

And I thought about death, more than ever since Irma. Not about killing myself, but just about dying in a car accident on the way to or from the hell on the side of the hill that was my school. About getting a rare form of cancer, and dying before I could accomplish anything I actually wanted to do. I became so afraid of death that I had convinced myself I was going to die young, having accomplished nothing, and it was all because society had other things in mind for me to do.

And I got so angry.

Despite everything I’ve gone through in my life, I know I’m lucky…but it’s not enough to stop the anger. It’s not enough to get me out of bed. It’s not enough to shirk off my thoughts about death. It just isn’t.

My therapist recently told me about anticipatory anxiety, which is when you’re so anxious about something in the future that you just freeze up and don’t take action. I have anticipatory anxiety about death all the time, and apparently it’s not uncommon. The problem with our thoughts about death is that those thoughts are just there to occupy our minds until we actually do die. Life doesn’t seem real until it’s almost gone. And I don’t want to just survive until I die. I want to live.

But something about living is that you have to get up out of bed, and to live the life that you want to live, you should get up on your own terms, because you want to. Not because you have to so you can get to work, or because you have to get something done for somebody else by a certain time. You should get up because you owe it to yourself to get up.

Every day is a new opportunity to do something that you never get to do, to right a wrong, or to just be happy and not question why you’re happy. Every day should serve you in some way, and happiness is not selfish.

The scary thing about death is that it’s the only guarantee in life. Just because I’m terrified of it doesn’t mean it won’t come for me. I have to remind myself that waking up every day is something to be grateful for, because it’s a new opportunity to live. Like I said before: It’s not always enough. But at least it does give me one more reason to get out of bed every morning: I have the opportunity once again to figure out what does make me want to continue to live.

It may be a feeble reason, but it’s a reason.