I recall staring at myself in the
mirror when I was eight or nine. I looked at my pale face, my dark eyes and my ginger hair, and it occurred to me I was going to die soon. The thought didn’t come to me as a
shock, for I often imagined what it’d be like to be
dead, yet I was a little amazed with the great
certainty of the thought. I looked at myself, knew I was going to die young, and didn’t feel anything but a
perfect calmness.
I stopped talking to people, unless it was inevitable. Children thought I was weird, but I couldn’t care less. As a matter of fact I stopped caring for all the things that had been dear to me before, and found comfort in my carelessness instead. Whenever I had a headache, I knew it was a brain tumor (but it never was), when I had a tummy ache I was convinced I was having a heart attack, and when my mother drove me to school I imagined us crashing against a large truck, or a wall, or maybe even that tree over there. I felt my skull crushing.
Through the months I learned to start caring for things again, simple things like pancakes, drawings, cartoons, just the general stuff kids like. Then when I was sixteen years old it again occurred to me I was going to die within short. My motto became an extreme version of ‘seize the day’; I quit High School, made long trips, used an extreme amount of drugs and slept on the beach. I came to my senses when I realized that instead of seizing my days, I was just wasting them. Took me some time to realize that, I wasn’t too smart a kid.
Now I’m twenty and not all that convinced anymore I’m going to die young. Perhaps I’m just ignoring that little voice inside my head telling me that I’m going to die, I’m dead, I have no future, but ignoring is still better than giving in to it.
I can’t exactly give a reason why I’ve been so convinced of my early death all my life. I just felt that way.
- In case I suddenly disappear from E2, you know what happened.