To Be or Not to Be Alive: The Only Question that Matters

A small, nearly-accurate representation of someone being crushed by their own anxieties.

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Photo: Natalia Y/Unsplash

I see nothing. Only pitch-black darkness engulfing every single part of my aching bones, organs, muscles. It leaves me wondering—do I actually still see, even though it’s only the darkness itself; or have I gone completely blind?

Then, it is cold, out of the blue. Unlike any other coldness I have ever felt before—not even similar to the cold I felt when I was being stranded under heavy rain and angry thunderstorms all around me—it’s just so, so, painful. It’s stabbing every single part of my skin. It even almost reaches my soul—which is buried deep down this weakened figure—only an inch left in proximity. It has pierced through my once metal-thick shell.

The only sound I hear is the loud thumping of my heart inside my ear. Thump, thump, thump. It resonates and echoes around the void that is called my mind, as if it is reminding me—at the same time, taking the mickey out of me—of being alive.

The whole body starts to tremble so ferociously, you’d start to think I have moving plates inside. It’s like an earthquake, destroying every single thing existing inside. But it takes the toll on my sanity—completely ruined, found in pieces, separated too far away from their unit. Almost impossible to pick up the pieces, as the quake has knocked on the front door, yet again.

Never have I ever known that my whole body possesses the longest, high-in-volume river, as my eyes pour the heaviest waterfall acknowledged to exist. The tears keep falling, almost threatening to drown me in it, never seeming to want to stop. It then flows inside my respiratory canals; it leaves me wondering, yet again, whether it is merely my imagination or a painful reality. Only after I am left suffocated enough; gasping desperately for a little bit of air, the river decides to show some insincere mercy.

The brain refuses to think of things other than their own misery. Popping back deadliest memories, even the ones I thought I’d buried deeper than six feet under. They come back to life like zombies: slowly, but surely, eating the last piece of sanity left.

This whole body—this whole system—seems like it has prepared to murder me alive, cooperating with each other, fueled by hatred and mountain-high piled-up emotions. It doesn’t just want to explode—it wants to shut everything down in the most excruciating way. Like I am a computer, and the entire system is running amok.

I am at my most vulnerable.

—To actually experience all this pain while being aware of the fact that I am, indeed, very much alive.

"Oh, to be or not to be alive," I ask myself, with a two-headed coin in the palm of my hand.

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(to be continued)