The real kind, not the bullshit abstraction that depressives long for and poets go on about and goths pretend to love.
Because real death isn’t some skeletal bloke with an hourglass and a love for old fashioned clothing politely waiting for your “time”.
No, real death is shrieking psycho covered in blood and coming at you covered in piss and shit and blood and bile and pain and horror and torture to take you out in as messy and humiliating way possible.
It will take everything from you, even the most basic of dignities like choosing when and where to poop, and grind you up like living sausage until you aren’t even a person any more, just a broken sack of meat that lives only to suffer until Death finally pities you enough to let you die.
That’s real death. It isn’t clean or dignified or final. It isn’t beautiful like a black rose or hauntingly touching like a Victorian graveyard or peaceful and quiet like a midnight sepulcher or dignified and regal like a royal tomb.
That’s not the real death. That’s playtime death, a mere Halloween toy. That’s a safe, sanitized, marketable death suitable only for contemplating people who want to feel dark and mysterious and deep. People who want to flatter themselves that they are somehow closer to The Truth because they not only face death, but embrace it. And that this supposed embrace makes them better – realer – than other people.
Bullshit. You’re just another fool in love with their reflection in the mirror – only not as deep. Your superficial death fetish is the same as all the other fools mired in their own vanity and trying to be “cool”.
The only thing that changed was the color palette.
The slightest hint of real death, with its rot and its stink and its destruction of all vanities, would scare you just as much as it would any cheerleader or suburban dad or old person who voted Trump.
More so, even, because unlike those people, you were fool enough to think that Death was your friend.
How very pathetic.
So go ahead. Dress in black and silver. Wear your skulls and scythes and tombstones. Have your unique subculture where you dance around in pretty clothes and socially compete and form cliques and exclude people…. so unlike everyone else!
But know that in the end, it was never more than fashion. Just another branding exercise to convince you that you can be better than everyone else by buying the right line of products. Another captured market, another tapped demographic.
And it was never about death. It was about Death(tm), a sanitized and pasteurized and Disneyfied cartoon of the real thing. A conformist like all the rest.
Just one with a slightly smaller herd.
There is nothing beautiful about real death. People don’t disappear in a pillar of light. They don’t get tidily escorted to the afterlife by some supernatural tour guide. They don’t lay down in a freshly starched grave and dramatically spire.
They just die. In shit and piss and hospital clothing, they die. On roadsides and in suburban homes, they die. In workplaces and wardrobes, they die. In wars and in warm baths, they die.
And there is nothing beautiful about it.
They don’t “pass away”. They don’t “move on to a better place”. They don’t “leave this vale of tears”, for fuck’s sake.
They JUST FUCKING DIE.
And there is nothing beautiful about it.
More after the break.
My many ailments
Aw fuck, looks like I have to do this one again.
Time to list the many, many things wrong with my body again. It is never any fun to do so but it gives me a feeling of control to call my demons by name.
So here we go :
Diabetes. The Big Mack Daddy of my ailments. Totally out of control. My blood sugar should be under 10 but no matter what I do, it hangs out between 20 and 30. I keep taking insulin and it keeps making very little difference. I shudder to think about what that might mean. Am I just plain immune to insulin in all forms now? If so, how is energy getting to my cells? Or is it only the manufactured stuff that has no effect on me? What the hell do I have to do to get it down to a healthy level?
There is some lab work I have to do for Doctor Caswell on Monday. Hopefully she will have it by the time I visit her on Wednesday.
Although in a world where a simply document takes two weeks to get to a cardiologist, you never really know.
Sleep apnea. Untreated, out of control. Presumably throttling me in my sleep dozens of times an hour while I sleep. I tried CPAP and it did not work for me. I “should” have immediately asked about alternatives. Instead I just let everything lapse and it has been a decade since I did anything about it whatsover.
Why? Because it was easier.
Easier than having to call someone and ask for something. Easier than having to have the initiative to even think about doing that. Easier than taking care of myself at all.
And now my heart might go boom.
I am so very fucked.
Umbilical hernia in sternum. The same sternum they will have to crack to get to my heart and fix it. I suppose that I should mention that to someone in case they have forgotten all about it.
After all, they are busy, important doctors and don’t have time to read every piddling little thing in my medical file just because it might save my life!
Peripheral neuropathy in fingertips and feet. I am far too used to my feet being partly numb and tingly 24/7. It’s my normal now. But it’s not normal, is it?
Cartilage damage to my knees. Especially the left one. It’s been giving me little warning pains for over a month now. Might pop at any second, and then I will be howling in agony and wanting to die.
Sure hope I’m not alone at the time. Because finally, I have :
Suicidal depression. Not at a crisis level yet, but all this horrible scary news about my health has really supercharged those escapist impulses of mine that make me want to escape from everything, and there is only one way to do that.
Namely, by not be alive any more.
So I am keeping a close eye on that shit.
I wish I could just surrender to a high authority and trust that they have my best interests at heart and I can relax knowing I am in good hands.
But I am, deep down, deeply mistrustful of other people’s competence, commitment levels, and willingness to actually invest in me on any level and for any period of time beyond the immediate moment.
So I don’t know who I could ever trust like that.
Certainly not medical professionals, and I am not about to find religion.
Guess I will just die alone then.
I will talk to you nice people again tomorrow.