The Thing About Mortality

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,,By Marcelles Diablo Raynes,,
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I've been having a lot of trouble sleeping. No, it's not memetic, or even anomalous. It's something different, something worse than either of those.

The problem is that I'm scared to break my stream of consciousness. Terrified, actually, and even that's putting it mildly. There's no way to find out where //"I"// go when I'm asleep, and sleep is just temporary. If we as a species can't even figure out what happens to our consciousness when we're sleeping, I'm too scared to find out what happens when we die. You don't wake up after the end.

There's been too much loss in my life; friends, family, co-workers, and loved ones. I'm sure you've had a similar experience, or maybe a few similar experiences. I really hope you haven't.

I think about where they are right now every day, and if there is even a //"them"// to be somewhere in the first place. Every time I close my eyes at night I keep thinking about that place beyond this one.

I //want// there to be an afterlife. Heaven, Hell, Limbo, Nirvana, Valhalla, any of them. Or if there's really nothing waiting for us, then I want to know that's what's coming. More than anything in the world, I just want some damn confirmation.

I guess this all really started when my great-grandfather died. I was five, maybe six years old at the time, and I remember visiting him in the hospital every weekend just to check on him. We played cards, he showed me a few magic tricks, did all the things a great-grandpa is supposed to do for their grandkids.

Then one day we stopped going, and my mom told me that he had passed in his sleep. I was sad, as anyone would be. I understood that I couldn't see him anymore and I knew that I missed him, but he was old. Old people don't have that much time left, and that made sense to me at least.

My friend, Shannon, comforted me at school after his passing. She was a real help with processing the grief I didn't know I was feeling at the time. Hanging out with her made me feel better, and that's all that mattered.

After I had finally started to move on from my great-grandfather's passing (is move on even the right term for that?), Shannon and I started talking more frequently. We sat next to each other in gym class, making fun of the try-hards and doing our best to avoid getting yelled at by the gym teacher. She started sitting next to me in class, passing funny notes to me whenever our teacher wasn't looking. I even went over to her house a few times and got to meet her family, who treated me like I was one of their own kids.

All in all, it was a pretty sweet friendship. Probably the first one I ever had.

When I heard that Shannon died, I was heartbroken. School ended one day just like it had for years at that point. There wasn't anything special about it. We said our "good-bye's" and our "see ya laters", and that was it. I went home, complained about my homework, played video games, and went to bed. Like clockwork. I was expecting to see Shannon the next day.

But her heart gave out in the driveway practicing soccer with her dad. She died on the spot, and I never saw her again.

Ever since that day, I realized the same thing would happen to me. It didn't bother me for a while, but then I started worrying about her. Where did Shannon go when she died on the pavement? Did she go to heaven like my pastor said? Was she somewhere else? Was there even a //"her"// to be anywhere else anymore? It's... horrifying. Kids aren't supposed to die, man. Especially not like that.

I just want to stop thinking about it but I can't! I want to go back to a time when I wasn't aware of this bullshit. I want my friend back. And I don't want to die.

I hate the thought that she's gone forever. I don't want to accept that but... that's the reality I'm stuck in, the one where I have to live without her. The one where I got a chance to grow up, and have kids, and go to prom, and college, and she didn't get any of that.

I miss my friend.

-Partial transcript of Dr. Rayne's 12^^th^^ Therapy Session at Site-83
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