4:04am May 2, 2014

I think part of the thing getting to me.

youneedacat:

Is that you can’t live with the knowledge that your lifespan is likely to be drastically reduced, and then see death getting closer and closer. And then, when pulled out of the way of death, and put in a position where you might easily live to be eighty, suddenly be fine and normal and everything’s okay. (Which, yes, does remind me of stuff Harriet Johnson has said. Although her experience was different because she was expecting to die young from the time she was five years old.)

And also it’s very hard for me to break out of this programming that tells me that to even talk about how bad it was is to be overly dramatic and worry people and I shouldn’t do that. Like the only reason I can talk about it right now, to the extent that I have, is that it’s better. If things got that bad again I’m not sure I could publicly state how bad they were, unless they got better again.

And I’m not even sure that makes sense.

Hi, we’re not mutual followers but this post (and a lot of your stuff about marona recently) has been touching a lot of familiar buttons, so maybe wanted to words at it a bit.

I’ve run into this situation a couple times — for medical reasons, and just because of suicide attempts in younger years. Presently I am living with another condition, one that I don’t discuss much, that could kill me within a decade (but there is every measure of hope that treatment will prevail, and the measures needed are not horribly invasive or expensive as yet). I am old enough now that this no longer seems like a very long time at all, even though my 15-year old self would be astonished to have made it so far.

It is impossible to be “normal” about death, anymore. I’ve measured my upcoming lifespan in minutes and seconds on occasion; I’ve received the possibility of many additional decades that bring it up to about average, and then had that number sharply curtailed by the next new thing. Comparing the ages of relatives who’ve passed is too skewed a data set to really yield a pattern — my lineage seems to be capable of average lifespans, but few make it that far.

It leaves one tilted and spinning, on a peculiar axis. It’s strange trying to navigate life with that spin, and it makes it tricky to move in quite the direction you meant or expected to sometimes. It’s tricky to share that with other people who have no similar experience. By and large, people don’t want to die, they don’t want their friends and loved ones to die, and they need to deploy coping strategies for it. Ones that have to do with displacement or denial more often than acceptance — and it’s usually a cold sort of acceptance, a resignment to the inevitable.

Sometimes the difference seems of no account in your interactions with people — right up until the topic is raised, conversationally or just because of events. And the distress it brings for folks becomes very evident. Your inclination is to be matter-of-fact about the thing, but “being okay with death” (in a way that is not resignment to it or suicidal seeking, but simply awareness and appreciation) scares people. They start anticipating loss, or the close passing of that thing they spend much of their lives trying to avoid.

It makes sense, your reaction.