The darkness was so intense it was paralyzing. All I could do was compulsively scroll. My body contracted and curled around itself.
But what if I stopped trying to escape? What if I let this be exactly as terrible as it was? What if I even enjoyed it?
Eventually, I got up and walked toward the coast under the full moon.
Headlights washed over the grass.
"The volcano's going off. Want to drive up?"
I asked the moon. Yes. So we went. On the drive, I prayed for help.
The lava was easy. Magical. Effortless. My consciousness had been arrested in the act of eating itself alive.
The next morning, my Facebook feed filled with the news that Carolyn Elliott had died.
I couldn't stop thinking her. I knew that darkness.
Later that evening, I stopped being hunted by death and rehearsed it instead.
It started with an intention: to accept myself exactly where I was while following any faint impulse toward play.
I had an impulse and acted on it before my brain could talk me out of it.
"Touch me like I'm dead," I said. "Like my body is decomposing and you're fungi eating it."
I couldn't have imagined what happened next.
First they were fungi. Then they were carnivores.
Then I asked them to tell me I'd been loved.
They spoke to me like I was already gone. They told me what I had meant to them. They told me about the impact I'd had on the world.
I cried.
The strongest feeling was relief.
While I was dead, I didn't have to try. I didn't have to earn money. I didn't have to prove I was worth something. I didn't have to create anything of value.
I could let all of it go.
PS: If this conversation stirred something in you, here's where we're continuing it.
