stop running from death

on living a life you won't forget

How can something be so normal and so scary at the same time?

When I think about the things that scare me, it’s usually what I don’t know. Looking out into the vast, giant world, I don’t know what’s out there. I don’t know how it’ll treat me. I don’t know if it’ll love me as much as I love it.

Like making a new friend. Or moving to a new city. Or starting a new job. There’s no guarantee it’ll last, or how long it lasts.

At the same time, I’m also scared by death. Death is finite, we know it comes eventually. But we don’t know when. We don’t know how. We don’t know where.

Will I have accomplished all my dreams by the time it comes knocking on my door? How will I be remembered, if I’m remembered at all? Does my life end with me, or will its memory continue to breathe in those I leave behind?

And then there’s not just my death, but the death of the people around me. Those who are still near and dear, those who used to be, those who never were able to break beyond the veil but whose proximity remains close. And it hits hard all the same.

Death comes after us all, and yet, we work so hard to escape it, trapped inside the places and people that keep us safe even if it keeps us stuck.

I want to feel alive while I’m alive. Yet, my need to escape death keeps me still, unmoving, unchanged. Because the world may be beautiful, but it’s also scary. Filled with dangerous people, dangerous things. So sometimes I stop living so that I can survive, but I know it’s not truly living.

Because what is a life worth living if it’s one we can’t remember? One that’s memorialized, even if just in our own heads.

Life is about making mistakes. It’s about finding yourself in unfortunate situations where you keep going back to the ones who can’t, won’t, commit. It’s about unintentionally, sometimes on purpose, hurting those you love. It’s about being selfish, and being selfless. It’s about buying those shoes you know you didn’t need but got anyway. Or booking the group trip with your credit card because your actual bank account is in the negatives. It’s about graduating college and being the first in your family to get a degree. Or dropping out of high school and moving to France and marrying the first person you meet.

It’s about creating stories. Stories to tell over a campfire, or a warm cup of tea, or to your journal.

It’s about messing up and starting again. Trying something new and returning to what’s familiar.

Life is whatever we make of it. Because it’s true, we don’t know how long life will last. So we should live in it, to our fullest ability, while we still have it.

It’s okay to love. And to fall out of love. It’s okay to laugh. And it’s okay to cry. It’s okay to hurt someone and to ask for forgiveness. It’s okay. It’s going to be okay. And when it’s not okay, that’s okay too.

I’ve learned that again and again through the people who have passed on around me. And not just in literal death, but in the ones who I loved deeply who are no longer in my life.

“Love like it’ll last forever.” Because it does, even when it ends, you can’t really stop loving them. You never really do. And that’s okay too. That’s life.

It’s messy. Non-linear. Murky. Complicated. And… yours.