Dreaming About Death
When you’re driving through the mountains in late August, just when the monsoon is about to leave, making way for the autumn season, you experience fresh, misty and chilly air on your face. It makes you feel elevated. Well, I don’t feel this way. I feel like I’m going to die in the next blind turn which my car is about to take. I know it’s natural to feel this way when you’re high up on the mountains but I feel this mostly about everything. And I don’t want to.
For instance, if I’m happy, the first thought is always this — “oh god, something bad is going to happen soon for sure!” And the next minute, my smile fades away and bam! I’m sad now. Imagine feeling like this after every beautiful thing you experience. It feels awful.
This battle is never-ending. Why should I feel this way when I should be feeling grateful and happy?
But my constant fear could be due to my difficult childhood, the threat and the unsafe feeling I experienced. Or it could also be due to other reasons like — the loss of my grandmother the year when I was having the best year of my life, loss of 3 people within 10 days during the second wave of covid (I loved them all so much and they just disappeared) or this whole ‘bad thing is going to happen because I’m happy might also be due to our conditioning — “touchwood karo nahi toh nazar lag jayegi” “zyada khush nahi hote, phir burra ho jaata hai”.
But whatever the reason is, I want this feeling to go away and let myself be fully immersed in the moment. I am still in the recovery phase of the loss I experienced and it will take some more time. Parallel to all this, I am also in the best phase of my life right now, and I don’t want to experience this part of my life feeling numb and as an outsider, watching my life passing by.
I took a recent trip with my family to Jim Corbett and Nainital. I saw green mountains absorbing the last seasonal showers of rain, literally walked amidst the clouds, and intruded the home of many beautiful animals and our national animal- the tiger. I had the best time there and encountered serenity after a long time.
But the ceaseless fear of death and the feeling of being overwhelmed took at least 50 per cent of the joy I felt.
So it got me thinking — can I just let the anxious thought in my mind, let it wander for a second and let it go? Bad things are still going to happen to me whether I get into this scary spiral or not.
It might take a lot of time than I am anticipating. I want to experience the good things happening to me guilt-free. Because sadness sweeps us right away and we dive deep into it and swim for a while, so I want to feel this way when happiness knocks at my door. From this day onwards, I will start leaving these freaked out voices behind whenever life will throw little and big moments of pure joy at me. Experiencing euphoria interruption-free is going to be amazing. Isn’t?
