It’s 1 AM. I’m all warm and snuggled up in my blue flowery blanket. The room temperature is just right.

The cool breeze from the AC vent kisses my face gently, making me sink into a deep slumber. My eyelids begin to shut, heaven is just a blink away, when suddenly, like a jolt of electricity, a thought flashes through my mind at the speed of light. And just like that, sleep runs away from me like a toddler avoiding bedtime.

I try budging the thought away, just like I would madly run after a mosquito buzzing near my ears when I’m on the verge of entering the divine lap of the sleep gods. But this one thought? It just won’t go away.

Too stubborn I tell you. It lingers. It clings. And then it spirals.

“What if I don’t wake up tomorrow?”

At first, I convince myself that’s obviously not going to happen. I wasn’t born just to disappear into oblivion without truly living or learning. That thought gives me a tiny flicker of hope… for a millisecond. But before I know it, I’m back, neck-deep in life-altering, mind-bending theories.

What is life?

What is death?

If we’re meant to live, why die?

If we’re going to die anyway, why live at all?

Is there an afterlife?

Do we get reborn?

As someone who’s always been painfully curious, I’ve wrestled with these questions more often than I’d like to admit. But when these thoughts started visiting me every single night like uninvited guests who just won’t take a hint, that’s when I knew something was terribly off.

I was anxious.

Lightheaded.

Breathless.

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My first panic attack ambushed me in March 2020, when the world was already busy trying to make sense of a raging pandemic. Though the intrusive thoughts paused briefly, I didn’t know that was just a soft launch, a tiny prep for the chaos that was to follow.

Imagine being 15 and realizing that your biggest concern isn’t exams, crushes, or college admissions. It’s the overwhelming fear of disappearing. Of vanishing one day without notice.

It was the sheer fear of death, of being “unalived” out of the blue one day that always made me feel on the edge. With covid cases rising like the monstrous sea waves on a full moon night, my heart would beat faster with the news of death toll sneakily lurking on my television screen.

And yet, my fear of death itself isn’t the single most root of my unease. What truly unsettles me is that death is never spoken about. It’s never a dinner-table conversation. It’s never made a part of the “let’s talk about life” package that parents hand down to their kids.

We tiptoe around it.

We hush it down.

We send the kids into another room at funerals, leaving them with no clue of what's going on.

And while not talking about death doesn’t really do any harm to young children, all it does is delay their ability to come to terms with reality. When death strikes someone you love, the punch is hard, and no amount of sheltering can prepare you or even your little children for that gut-wrenching blow.

If only death was treated like any other topic say, choosing a career path or navigating friendships, maybe kids like me wouldn’t grow up feeling so blindsided by it.

Still, I grew up, and so did my obsession with death. Not in a creepy way (okay, maybe a little), but mostly in a way that stemmed from wanting to know. To understand what happens when the soul leaves the body.

To know if we ever really “move on.” To find out if your family ever makes peace with the loss. Are they ever able to let go of your memories, or your old clothes?

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But there’s also quite a contradiction in the way I feel about death.

I agree, talking about death opens my mind, broadens my horizons. It stretches my perspective. It makes me feel a little braver. But thinking about it happening to me or someone I love makes my chest feel tight and my breathing go so shallow that I just can’t put into words what that feeling feels like.

So yes, while I believe death deserves a place at the dinner table, I also know it's an emotionally exhausting ordeal. One that hurts, even if it helps.

Post-COVID, my thirst for answers only intensified. I’ve officially messed up my Instagram and YouTube algorithms by going down rabbit holes of afterlife theories, those scary and not so aesthetic “soul leaving the body” thumbnails, and spiritual podcasts that freak you out and comfort you in the same breath. Thanks, curiosity.

And even though this might sound like a dark, broody obsession for someone my age, I wear this curiosity with pride. I want to have uncomfortable conversations because I believe they carry with them a lifetime’s worth of wisdom.

I am absolutely in favour of parents who are mindful enough to introduce such topics in age-appropriate ways. But there's a stark difference between protecting children and making them turn a blind eye to the truth. Difficult conversations don’t fast-forward a child’s maturity, rather they equip them to face life in its real, most raw and unfiltered form

Am I scared?

Yes.

Of what lies ahead.

Of how much time I have left with my loved ones and vice versa.

Of what will happen to my belongings (especially those cringey Snapchat photos and videos) when I’m gone.

Maybe a part of me did grow up with this fear wired into my subconscious. Maybe I clung to the theme of death the way other kids clung to ghosts, fairytales and magic. Maybe it’s weird. Maybe it’s not.

But what I do know is that being aware of death has taught me to not take life too seriously. I do stay up at night thinking about death, but what also keeps me up is how life isn’t as serious as we’ve made it to be. It has made me obsess a little less about what people think of me. I do take things personally, but not as much as I used to before.

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For I know, today shall be a history for so many of us who won’t even be here alive by that time to remember a certain point in time, possibly when someone hurt me, or when I hurt them. So, staying up at night, thinking about death has not been entirely negative. (takes a deep sigh)

Afterall, it has taught me how I must tone down the intensity of fake scenarios in my head. It’s made me care a little less about what people think. It’s made me feel lighter. Because in the end, who’s going to remember what someone said to hurt me at 19 when we’re all gone or replaced by robots anyway?

And that, right there, reminds me how dumb a decision it would be to let other people’s perception of me rent space in my head, when even words eventually fade. Not just the body, but words too. They lose all their meaning after a point, don’t they?

Oh, wait!

Then tell me something.

In that case, is death really just a phenomenon for the human body? (Nah, 100% not!)

Don’t words and their weight die too?

And no, you can’t convince me otherwise. I’m falling for this propaganda head over heels and so should you, my friend!