“Nothing is created, nothing is destroyed;”
A few months ago I saw a writing prompt and it was to write about death. That writing prompt has stuck with me ever since. For months now, I have been wanting to write about death. But what is death ? This is the question I churned in my mind over and over again, the experience of “death” is also one I am closely acquainted with. Since I was little I have been experiencing “death”. When I was 7 years old my cousin passed away at the age of 21. I remember his “death” having profound emotional and physical impacts on me and family. We did not celebrate Christmas that year how we normally would. I’ve also had a couple near death experiences myself. At some point in my pre-teen years I was riding my bicycle and I fastened my helmet to tight…around my neck, I was choking to “death”, I was turning blue, and my mother was panicking thinking she would loose me soon. Clearly I survived. Then in high school I fell down a flight of stairs at work, I got taken to the hospital in an ambulance. I was in an induced comma for about 16 plus hours. When I woke up the doctors advised I not use my brain or think. Then the next time death came to visit me was when my mother got diagnosed with stage 3 pancreatic cancer. I was her primary care taker and witnessed how she slowly, painfully, died. The morning she took her last breathe we were in the hospital. I remember trying to get up but I couldn’t. I still remember her lifeless body. Then fast forward to this year 2021. The theme of this year has been death. So many people, relationships, situations, have ceased to exist. So much has “died”. I even had 2 near death experiences, well maybe not near death but I did get hit by a moving vehicle twice this year, in a matter of 6 months. When am I suppose to die? How do I get hit by a car twice in 6 months and I’m able to get up, walk away, and think about it. Among me almost dying twice this year, my grandmother of 96 years passed away and my uncle of a drug overdose. Days later my first meaningful relationship ceased to exist. Then I did die.
Alpha
The end of July 2021 many things and people ceased to exist from my 3D reality, including myself. The desire, motivation, and life that once filled my body stop flowing. I didn’t know what to do or where to even start to pick up the pieces. I didn’t know how to handle or process so much “death”. All I did know was too numb the pain with alcohol. So I drank an unhealthy amount. I blurred my reality and eased the pain. But soon my family got concerned and they made me realize my relationship with alcohol too needed to end. That’s where it all began. When I first tried to get sober I was left with myself, my thoughts, my demons. I felt the pain, I sat with the uncomfortable thoughts, I sat with the loneliness and felt death. What I learned is that death does not exist. It is an abstract notion. I wasn’t really dead, just who I use to be. My mother, grandmother and uncle were not lost. They just transitioned to another way of existing. As for my relationship well that still exist in my memories. I became far too comfortable with death and now I do not fear it. I know that when my time comes to cease to exist in this plane I will transition to another. I use hear that energy cannot be destroyed and no matter how much I self-destructed I survived and learned to live. I am a new person now because of the death of so many people, places and things. I am creating and defining life for myself. I am learning that in order to live you just need to know how you want to be remembered by those left behind. People will always remember how you made them feel. People will always have memories of who you were and how you treated them. I learned that in those memories you will always live on. The only guarantees we have as humans is change and that one day our fate is to transition, expire, and the only thing that lives on is the memories we create. So everyday at the start of my day, I ask myself, “How do I want to be remembered?”
