They call me... Ray of Sunshine

This past Saturday I was running late for a show in Plaistow. Corey and I had a little miscommunication issue so we left about a half hour behind schedule. He, his sister and I were traveling down route 111 in Hudson when, seemingly out of nowhere, break lights were all we could see. Naturally my first instinct was to get annoyed, as I usually am in traffic, but as we came closer to the cause of all the congestion my mood changed. At first we thought it was a car accident, but the only cars we could see were ones that had pulled over to help. Then we thought maybe it was a motorcycle accident, but a few seconds after that was suggested we discovered that it was a pedestrian who had been hit. I was driving so I only got a quick glimpse of him, but that was enough. Corey was in the passenger side and got the "best" look at what happened. After we drove past he just looked forward and said, "Oh god... he's dead. He's definitely dead." Which made all of us in the car feel a little off, but most of all Corey. I tried to be positive about the situation and hoped that he would be okay, but Monday we all discovered that he had not made it. (See this article for more information)

That morbid scene then became an in depth discussion between the three of us. Corey had been the most affected. He claimed it made him question his own mortality and made him realize that death can come at any time. I can't fully speak for his sister, but I can say that it didn't affect me as much. I told him that I must be desensitized by death, to which he said that most of society is. Obviously, the scene made me think. Obviously, it made me sad. But no, it did not make me as upset as it made Corey. This may be because death is something I think about on a constant basis.

This, with the exception of funerals, was the first time I've seen death "in person." I've watched people dying (but never actually die). I've always had a morbid fascination with death, ghosts and haunted places. And on top of it all, the number one symptom of my lifelong anxiety disorder is my overwhelming fear of death.

Ever since I was a little girl I've had issues with leaving people. Still to this day I can't help but have a minor freak out every single time I say goodbye to those I care about. For some reason, my brain likes to make me think "they're going to die" every... single... time someone walks out the door. I've been dealing with this for almost 25 years now, so I've learned little ways to calm myself down. My earliest memory of this was when I was between 3 and 5 years old. I remember staring out the window at my parents as they left to celebrate their anniversary. I remember the panic start to fill my body. Then, and for years after that, my family just called me a "worrier." It was somewhat of a joke, but it wasn't until maybe high school that I realized it was anxiety. I used to sit up in the middle of the night for hours having panic attack after panic attack thinking to myself that something was wrong... that my parents were going to die. Sometimes it was so severe that I had to go into my parents room to check on them. I would wake up my mom and use the "I had a bad dream" excuse just to put my mind at ease... just to know she was still alive.

Now, I know exactly what those feeling are. I know how to try and talk myself out of them, but they are still there constantly nagging me. I have no idea where this irrational fear of death came from. And I don't fully understand how can I be simultaneously fascinated and afraid of it. I know it's just a natural part of life. It's something we all have to deal with, and there is really no way of stopping it from coming. I've experienced a good amount of death in my time. I've been to kind of a ridiculous amount of funerals for someone so young, but still I fear it. I still think about people dying all of the time.... so I think that's why when I was faced with the death of the man on the side of the road I could somewhat keep the same state of mind. Again, it's not that I wasn't sad for him (because I am, very much so), I just wasn't as affected as Corey. Sometimes I think he thinks he's invincible, so maybe the man on the side of the road served as a bit of a reminder to him that he should be a little careful. But maybe I should adopt a little bit of this invincible thinking so I don't slowly drive myself insane...