The big 3.

Every year, just before or after my birthday, I write a post reflecting on the past, being mostly negative about the future and generally expressing my fear of time.

This year is no exception, especially since this is an important year; It's the year I turn 30.

-So what? someone may ask.

Well, the big 3 means I'm not only changing decade, but I'm entering the adult world.
Being in my 20s isn't going to be an excuse good enough to justify not getting my shit together. I'm not a teenager anymore, nor am I in my post teen years.
30 signifies the death of my inner child, and even though that sounds grim, I find it to be true.  The inner child needs protection, is codependent, and knows that they have a 'security blanket' at all times. The inner child is innocent, playful and carefree. And even though I could try to hold on to whatever innocence I have left, none of the rest can be part of adult me, if I want to survive.

And that is scary as fuck.
It's like bungee jumping, but not knowing if the rope will hold your weight or break. So, even though 'growing up' is something I know and recognise I have to do, I'm terrified.

That fear had been so intense it had paralysed me. Thankfully, I've done a lot of work on myself in the past two years, so I'm somewhat coping, but still, the fear is there.

The fact that me turning 30 coincides with returning to England, re-starting my life once again (with my partner this time), and getting a full time job irrelevant to any of my studies or interests, shows the next chapter has arrived.

Hopefully, as the pages turn, fear will dissolve and maybe a more positive emotion -followed by a more positive outcome- will come after it.

Wish me luck y'all, I'll definitely need it.

XoXo,
Lara  

Fear of Death

Fear of death is something that has been torturing me since a very young age. It has been paralysing at times. Avoidance and inaction feels like freezing time after all. Not doing, inertia, gives you the false impression that you managed to pause life itself. 
But you didn't. 

Sometimes you may even consider inertia as 'not living.' And if you're not living, how could you ever die?
The safety not acting brings is very comforting. You make no right, you make no wrong, and you also don't progress. Because progressing means death. Doing brings you a step closer to death. 

I have been avoiding dealing with death for a very long time. The first time I had to face death was when family pets died. The first couple of times I was too young to understand what death meant. Then, I realised death is loss. Death is not ever seeing someone or something again, never experiencing life with them again, never experiencing what you love about them again.

When I was ten, my mum's mother, my grandma, passed away. She was 96 and bed bound for the last eight years of her life. She died in her sleep, on an armchair in the living room, as I was playing with my toys in the same room. They told me she died in her own bedroom a few minutes later. I recently was told by a cousin that she actually died in front of me. I still cannot digest that. I have no recollection of it. At the time, I didn't really deal with her death. I wasn't even allowed at her funeral. It wasn't until years later that I actually managed to come to terms with her passing.

The following years I heard about a few of my parents' relatives and acquaintances passing away. Most of the time I didn't even know them in person, so even though I might have felt a bit shaken, I was able to move on without paying attention. The very few times someone I actually knew passed away I didn't really think about it. I was sad and even devastated when I heard about it, but the next day it was as if the bad news had disappeared from my thoughts. Even when I went to someone's funeral, I tried to treat it like a bad dream. It wasn't real to me. It wasn't that I didn't care about those people, it was that I didn't have the mental capacity to deal with loss. I didn't know how to mourn and move on. 

One day before I turned 21, our dog, Lulu, had to be put down. She had multiple types of cancer and she was suffering. She was 15 years old. I had to tell her goodbye, so I spent some time with her, telling her how much I loved her, how much she meant to me. We had her since I was six. I couldn't stop crying. After the vet put her down I didn't stop crying for a week. I couldn't eat, I couldn't speak. I was a mess. Up to this day I feel like she's going to come to the kitchen sometimes and give us her googly eyes to get food. 

I took an oath to never have a dog or any other pet after that. I didn't have the strength to live with their loss. 

In the past five years I keep on hearing about death. In my personal circles and in the world. Terrorism, mass murders, suicides, old age, diseases etc. And I block it. I desperately attempt to never think about it. Many times I fail though. And those times it's tremendously hard to get on with life. 

After the loss of a close family friend a few months ago, then my grandma’s and more recently a family member’s miscarriage I have been thinking about death constantly.

We recently visited our family friend's widow. She was a shadow of her once cheerful self. There was a sadness in her eyes, a surrender. She's 56 years old, relatively young. Still, you could tell she didn't know how to keep on living. She had been married to her husband since she was 17 years old. She only knew how to live as his wife. She had never experienced adult life without him. Luckily, she became grandmother a few months prior to her husband's passing. From our conversation I realised her grandchild is what is keeping her alive. The night after our visit I found it hard to sleep. I couldn't shake her image from my head. The way she sat, how many times she almost burst into tears...

On the 23rd of July my dad's mother, my other grandma, passed away at 102. She died in her sleep on her bed, surrounded by her children and children in law. I hadn't seen her much in the past ten years, only a couple of times a year -if so-, since I lived in England. The last 2 years she couldn't communicate and didn't know what was going on most of the time. The only time I cried was when during her funeral, one of the children she saved as a nurse spoke about her life. I still haven't mourned her loss. Maybe because I didn't spend as much time with her. The funeral was quite hard, especially since my aunt decided she wanted an open casket. She looked quite peaceful, as if she was asleep. However, when I touched her forehead to say goodbye, she was frozen. Then it hit me: That was her dead body. It was an empty vessel and my grandma wasn't in there anymore.

I haven't been able to sleep properly since her passing. My nightmares have gotten worse and my anxiety has hit the roof. I think with her death and what came after her death, I had to admit that life ends. I had to face that life is short and when the end comes, it's the end. 

Please don't respond with your religious beliefs about the afterlife; they're irrelevant to me. And unnecessary at this point. I personally believe death brings the end. You're gone. Nothingness.
And that will be forever hard to handle.

Two days ago I was informed that a relative of mine -who has been trying to get pregnant since April- had a miscarriage. It was very early stages of the pregnancy, but she was still broken. I didn't speak with her much as we're trying to give the couple privacy. Nevertheless, I could feel her pain for the loss of a future child. The loss of her hopes that she would be a mother. Her and her husband are mourning at the moment. 

It has been a very tough summer. The warmth of the weather collides with the deaths in my immediate circles, only highlighting the antithesis.
Quite mentally drained at the moment, I'm hopelessly searching for a healthy strategy on coming to terms with loss, with death.
I have a very long way to go, and I'm unsure I'll ever manage it. 

~

ps. In reading this, I hope you find comfort in the fact that you are not alone. We all come across death and loss in life. It's one of the few things that we all have in common, a few things that can unite us.
ps2. Part of a poem inspired by the events of this summer.

Creepy incident vol. 244848220

I'm at the bus stop waiting for the night bus.

This guy keeps looking my way.
I ignore him.
He doesn't seem like he wants to get on the bus.
Then, after 10 minutes he comes to wait at the bus stop.
I go stand away from him.
The bus arrives.
He purposely comes where I am so we get on the bus from the same door.
He stands next to me on the bus.
When I push the stop button and try to move towards the front of the bus he says in English that he's getting off as well.
We get off the bus.
At this point I'm well aware he got off because he's creepy/dangerous. So, I wait at the bus stop to see if he's going to go away.
After a few minutes he disappears and so I proceed to walk home.
However, he was hiding behind a wall and suddenly creeps from behind to comment on my tattoos.
I murmur something and try to walk away.
He walks faster and stops in front of me and asks me about my accent and where I'm from.
I say that I'm Greek and I try to move away.
At this point I'm not even trying to get home because I don't want him to know where I live.
He asks if I'm going home. I say I'm just walking around.
He persists on having conversation with me.
I say that I don't feel comfortable talking to strangers.
He looks weirded out. I say thank you and walk away.

Now, after I walked away I had to hide and wait to make sure he truly left.
Even after that I kept looking behind my shoulder to make sure he wasn't following me.

And that, my male friends, is why you should NEVER try to approach women at night. Because experience tells us that if you do that, chances are you're a rapist, a serial killer or a stalker.

Random Thoughts XXXIII

So people need law to tell them what is wrong because without the fear of punishment people -supposedly- would just steal and kill etc (let's not mention that in today's society law is a mechanism that enforces capitalism, let's just refer to the old core of law before corruption consumed the human soul).

People also "need" religion telling them to be nice (exclude homo/trans/polyphobia, misogyny, sexism etc) because without the fear of going to hell or the fear of their soul not being saved or whatever, they'd just be assholes to each other.

I oppose both concepts.
I don't need anyone to tell me that I shouldn't kill, steal or hurt another creature.
I don't need someone to threaten me to be nice and decent.
I don't believe in law and I don't believe in religion. I do what I believe is right, always respecting myself and others.

And I call that common sense.

So, if you don't have common sense, and you need either law or religion to force you to be a decent human being, what does that make you?