Being born is a lot like drowning
Sometimes when you tell someone that you don’t want to have children, they tell you that you’ll die alone. In that sense, to bring a child into this world is a lot like choosing to take someone down with you.
I was an existentially aware child, which at this point I’ve gathered is a common thread that connects OCD sufferers. At seven years old, I would stay up all night and imagine scenarios where my parents died and left me behind while I wept into my bedsheets. Is this a memory from a past life? How did I know so much about my inevitable fate? I am endlessly fascinated by those children who remember their past lives, and in my own psychotic way I want to have a child of my own just so I can ask them the secrets of the universe before their memory fades and they become a normal assimilated human again (children are like ouija boards, somehow able to communicate and see past the veil of our present reality).
If I had a child it would be for selfish reasons like that one, or just to witness their emotional depth and think about myself less (because I’m always thinking about myself and my inevitable demise).
Having a child is always selfish, I think, but to be human is to be selfish.
See, my parents decided (I don’t know if it was intentional) to have me, and now every night before I go to bed I imagine what it feels like to be consumed by a force greater than myself. Sometimes it is a nuclear bomb. Other times a car accident. More often, I am old and it feels a lot like anesthetic, no time to think your last thought, you’re just gone. Fade to black.
While I vacuum my hallway I think about the last moments my parents will experience and wonder what their final thoughts will be. I wonder if I will hold their hands, and in that sense if my having been born will be worth it. If it means they will not be afraid, because I will hold them, then maybe it is alright (I am their parent, it’s sort of a Benjamin Button type arrangement).
Being born you are wise with information about death and your past life, and growing old you become a baby, desperate to be held in your final moments, unsure of what comes next, you know what I mean?
Being born is a lot like drowning in the sense that my parents can hold onto my shoulders and embrace a moment of comfort, but we both go under anyway. Except I go after them, probably. I go alone, weighed down by those who went before me.
Sometimes I think I am okay with that. I think about how I don’t want my parents to die alone, and that I am okay with being sacrificed to stop that from happening. I was born without consent, but I accept the circumstances.
But also, I spend every waking moment obsessed with the possible ways I might suffer and die an untimely demise.
I watch four hours of television and the voice in my head whispers one day you will watch your last episode of television and then you will die.
I get slightly bored hanging out with an acquaintance and it says you’re wasting your minutes with a person you do not care about. My inner voice has absolutely zero chill.
They say that when you die you will drink less and eat less, and sometimes family members do not like this so they keep stuffing you, but then they are drowning your organs, making death more of an agonizing experience. Your body knows to stop consuming, but your family does not.
In this sense, is dying alone the better choice? Is dying with others around you a lot like drowning? Literally and figuratively? Will looking into their eyes be a final reminder of how you are leaving them, how you created their reality and this inevitable loss?
If I had a daughter could I live with myself knowing that she would die without being in my arms?
I don’t know that I can handle that for my own mother, let alone someone I created.
I don’t know why anyone chooses to create that inevitable moment, except to reduce the fear around their own demise.
I don’t know.