Let me tell you a secret: I’m not afraid of dying. Sometimes, even, I yearn for it. I want it more than anything, more than anyone. No matter how many times religion likes to tell me about snakes that break you bones, and worms that eat through your skin, I will never stop yearning for death, in the same instance that you could yearn for a skinny love. You know you could never have it, you know it could never love you, but you need it. You put your solace in it. That’s what death is to me. A relationship I don’t think I could ever have.

Sometimes I even think of the approach of death. When death comes, does it come knocking? Or does it break through your door? Or does it crawl through your window while you’re sleeping?

I often wonder if there is a frame, a time—an instance, between life and death. That point, when we are not yet dead but not entirely alive either. When we hand something to others, there is an instance when our hands meet, or when our fingers touch, or our eyes linger onto one another, or we smile. There is an instant flashing moment when life meets death, and I wonder how beautiful and frightening that meeting is.Does life repel death? Does death repel life? Or are they indifferent to one another? Mere catalysts for the ‘grand scheme of things’?

We’ll never have the answer, but it’s all still very wonderful, really. When you think about it. Death is not such a sad thing. I mean, I do grieve the people I lose to death. But, death, in itself, is a thing to behold. Life brings us out of the earth, and death simply tucks us back into the earth when it’s our time to sleep.

This is another secret: I don’t think any of us fear death. I think we fear not being immune to death. We fear being unable to conquer death. Death makes us recognize our own human vulnerability and it sickens us.

Our own humanness sickens us.