The Biggest Fear.

The biggest fear. It’s almost as scary as having to share it. Parked the rain-soaked cinema carpark with your high school best friend. Hitting 2am on a phone conversation. The third date at the burger place on the corner.

Tell me your biggest fear?

I could lie, and stay on the surface. Palm out, arms length. Let’s keep the conversation light.

Don’t scare them.

Spiders, heights, small spaces. Those images of holes in hands and feet.

Sleeping through my alarm.

But if I’m honest, what chills me to my bones is what happens after we die. Not in a morbid type of way, but in one that pushes against the confines of my own mind. A thought that sends me in circles like livestock tied to a post. The way in which each organ, system, neurotransmitter just shuts down, like Christmas lights on a January evening. A peaceful final thought bridges the gap between living and not. The moment between consciousness and the lack thereof is an excruciating limbo that I can neither understand nor fathom.

What happens after we die? It does somersaults in my head as I lie very still.

My fear doesn’t come from religion, or science. It’s both and neither at the same time. It’s an unknown space that only those who are unable to report, are able to experience. There is nothing so equally trivial and breathtaking. What happens after we die? My mind wanders to cartoons of clouds and pearly gates, threats of gnarling trees and slick black rivers, or floating iridescence that stands between two loved ones as they argue. Some say your next life waits patiently for you to jump from one to the other. But what if it’s nothing? A starry galaxy or black and white light. I don’t know what’s worse; a void of unawareness upon entering the afterlife, or a painful clarity that looks at life through death’s eyes.

One thing that this fear brought with it, is an appreciation for the life of the living. An uncertain assuredness. A colourful bleakness. A motivation to grasp onto something tightly. A loved one, a song, a passion, a place. An inclination to let one of life’s great mysteries remain that way.

Why wonder what’s after, when there is so much of the before yet to see?

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