I've spent a concerning amount of time debating death.
How I will die.
What's the worst way to die?
What's it like?
I've narrowed it down to two.
They seem pretty obvious to me.
Top two ways to die: fire and drowning.
I think most people would agree on fire. I've laid awake at night in my bed imagining waking up to the smell of smoke. I've seen myself struggling to get out of my bed quickly enough, smoke billowing into my room as I try to shake free from the confusion of sleep. I imagine not being able to get out of my room. Of realizing what's about to happen.
Realistically, most people die of the smoke inhalation long before the actual flames begin to whip and tear and seer the flesh.
But then I ponder on some crazy scenario where I'm at the gas station and the pump won't shut off and a nearby person drops a cigarette and I see in horror the hot rock drop and the line of fire coming for me. How dying as I feel the burns scorching across my legs and arms and torso would have to be the worst way to go.
Then there is the drowning.
I almost drowned once at the beach on vacation with my parents. I'd gone too far out into the waves and before I understood what happened the sand was no longer below my feet and my body was being rolled in the waves.
How I'd thrashed and gasped for breath whenever my face would break surface. How every time I did, salty water burned down my throat and out of my nose.
I vividly remember the panic.
How I knew exactly what was happening.
My father dragged me out, but the experience easily made it to the top of my list of ways to perish.
I'd imagined if he hadn't gotten to me. How I'd keep getting pulled under until I couldn't fight it anymore and just had to let my lungs fill with the burning water, my eyes bulging and body screaming in pain as my life is sucked out of me while I'm filled with the water until I eventually lose the battle and pass out from the lack of oxygen.
Those are the easy top too.
But then there are others. So many others. There are infinite ways for a human to die. We are truly so entirely fragile when you sit and think about it.
Something I tend to do.
I think about getting swallowed by a whale. Of being in a plane crash. Of getting hit by a train. Of slipping and falling off of a mountain's edge. I think of standing in line at a Starbucks and a drunk driver slamming through the front, flattening me underneath its force. I imagine carrying boxes of stuff from one room to the next and tripping over the dog, falling onto the glass coffee table and the broken shards of the table slicing into a vital artery.
I am the epitome of intrusive thoughts.
I think I'd like to know when I'm going to die. To have some sort of warning beforehand so that I know it's coming. But then I think of how much that knowledge would lead my life. How I'd obsess over it until the ultimate day comes and all I've made of my life is dreading what I know is coming.
But then not knowing?
Having no clue?
That doesn't sit right with me either.
We are all supposed to just live our lives and go about each day without knowing who will be the last person we ever speak to. What our last words will be. The last meme we shared on Facebook. My last meal?
What if I waste it on something like McDonald's because I didn't know I wouldn't have the option of sushi or steak tomorrow.
I know I'd want a quick death.
But...not like too quick.
I don't want to die in my sleep, or get shot in the head with no warning whatsoever.
I think I'd like a little moment of understanding just right before it happens. So I can know it's coming. So I can expect it.
I want to see the whale's mouth open, hear the train approaching, recognize the sounds of screeching tires just before I close my eyes and I'm no longer a person.
I want a chance to tell myself goodbye.
To know I had a good run.
To be aware in my last moments that this is it.
I've spent so much of my own time staring off at nothing, my head full of imaginations of my own ultimate demise, I'd never let myself give too much thought of the equally inevitable deaths of the people around me.
Like my parents.
Their deaths were so boring. Lacking so much imagination from whoever writes the playbooks of our lives. They didn't get wild animals or dramatic stand offs.
They just missed a light.
The light turned red, and then they were dead.
A car crash.
The least thought about scenario in my head. Because that was just so normal. It was an everyday occurrence. People die in car wrecks all the time.
I wonder if they knew.
If they had long enough to realize the mistake and get what was about to happen before the truck slammed into their car and sent it careening down the hill.
I wonder if they thought about me in that tiny moment of space their minds may have had before they ceased to have any thoughts at all.
I wonder if for once they had the thought that they were grateful for my tardiness for the first time in their lives.
You see, that was supposed to be my way out too. I was supposed to be in that car. I should have been included with them as we all got motor vehicle accident written into the cause of death section on our death certificates.
We were supposed to all peace out of this existence together in the most unimaginative way possible. We were supposed to be together.
I was late, like always.
I texted to go on without me and I'd drive myself when I got done dealing with an issue that had come up.
They received my texts, probably rolled their eyes and shook their heads at their daughter. I wonder if they talked about what they were going to do with me. How they were going to get me to grow up.
I'll never know though.
Because they died without me.
Death is so unfair.
The not knowing when it's coming and not knowing what happens next.
It's just a cruel reality that we have to wake up and accept every single day.
If it wasn't for him, I would have been with them.
I don't know if it makes me angry or thankful.
Truly, it depends on the day.
Sometimes I hate him and myself for allowing myself to be slowed down in the moment. I could have kept walking, not decided to stop. If I had, I wouldn't be in this world alone. I'd never had to feel what it was to loose a parent. Even worse, the both of them in one foul swoop.
Other days I think how lucky I am that I stopped. How thankful I am to be alive, still able to contemplate my own death that has yet to come. Because of him, I didn't die that day.
For the first few years I thought of him everyday.
I scoured every social media, googled myself into oblivion, and begged the universe to let me find him.
I didn't know if I wanted to find him to hate him or thank him, but either way, I'd wanted to. I wanted to see him again. To know what his life became after we parted ways and I got to experience the worst phone call of my life all alone.
I wanted to know if he remembered.
The odds were not in my favor that he would.
I fixated on him for a long time.
My friends said it wasn't weird.
My therapist posed ideas like I was distracting myself with the thoughts of him instead of letting myself feel my grief and accept my guilt I carried for not being with them.
It made sense, she'd agreed, that I would choose to obsess over this stranger who was the only reason I wasn't also in that car with my parents when it got hit.
He's the reason I'm alive and he doesn't even know it.
I never found him on anything though.
For all I know, he's dead too.
It's not completely insane to think.
People die all the time, and from what I knew of him, he wasn't the most careful person.
I've given a lot of time to thinking of how I might die, but I've given even more thought now to the way I was supposed to have.