Chapter 1
The prospect of life is a frightening experience.
Some people fear heights, spiders, aeroplanes. For me, it’s the idea of time racing ahead, not waiting for you to achieve or for you to have everything figured out - the pending reality of the uncontrollable and unstoppable reality that the future will come. Regardless of who you are, where you’ve come from, what you face. Life waits for no-one. Ever.
Ever since childhood, the vice I possess has ultimately held me back from ‘living life’, having friends, experiencing what any child should. 6 year old me, awake at 1 AM, still in my tiny bed, trying to refrain from screaming and kicking over the idea of failure or the idea that my future will be everything I ever dreaded. Philosophers and scientists, religious thinkers and ordinary people; they try to navigate and conclude logical reasoning or mythical symbolism surrounding the meaning behind fears but it’s unthinkable to figure out. The future is inevitable - it will come for everyone. The hard part is guessing what will come.
I have spent sixteen years living perhaps what is a lie. For me to have dedicated expanses of time studying, working, doing anything for a glint of hope or control over what the universe decides of my fate. I may never awake tomorrow, may find a terminal tumour lodged in my brain, or be exploded by an ICBM sent by the Russian military. There is no idea of what could happen.
Some people fear nothing more than death itself. Who knows what death is? Is death the death of the heart, the brain? I don’t know. I’m a simple teenager who despises her lack of control over her future which she has invested so much in. What I do know is that in death there are new beginnings, there is reflection, there is escape from this insanity.
Life is a mesmerising journey of navigating the unknown in the body of a person, unable to comprehend the possibilities of what lies ahead of them. The blood pulsing through your vessels, the heart pumping the beat of life’s timer, the way your feet feel on the ground. What would my life be without this eternal motivation for success, power, control. What will life be like after this world? Will it be a void of open space, where I’m just floating - existing. What is the meaning to exist without the fear of what is to come? This is the question I just cannot seem to answer.
Perhaps fear is my purpose, my muse. If I’m honest, without such drive, I doubt I’d be anything other than a failure - but what the point if life decides this anyway. To live with fear is to live with an incurable illness which takes over your life. Years ago, they’d most likely restrain someone like me - put me in an institution - and reflecting on it, it may be the best solution for someone like me. I’m one with the gift of intelligence but what everyone forgets to mention comes with this knowledge, is the mind which never stops - the mind which feeds off of fear. Is fear the reason to live or is it the reason to die? I don’t know. I’m just a frightened teenager.
