My Villain Arc

I imagine death so much it feels more like a memory. When’s it gonna get me? In my sleep? Seven feet ahead of me? If I see it comin’, do I run or do I let it be? Is it like a beat without a melody?

You know how Facebook tends to give you shitty targeted ads that sometimes make sense and sometimes don’t? Like they pick up on one or two words in your posts or algorithm or the things you follow and just run with it nonsensically? I post a bunch about being autistic and my sons being autistic and so I always get a bunch of ads that are like “IF YOU OR SOMEONE YOU LOVE ARE AUTISTIC, YOU CAN SUE TYLENOL FOR EMOTIONAL DAMAGES” or something along those lines. I will not, of course, be suing Tylenol, but I totally would if I were guaranteed the money because, I’ll be honest, I like taking money from big corporations. That pleases me.

Anyway, the other day, one of those ads was from Cosmopolitan, which I devoured when I was in the 18-25 life, and the ad said something along the lines of “Every Zodiac sign has a corresponding Tarot card! What’s yours???” (complete with 72 question marks) Cosmopolitan, as you know, is absolutely the pinnacle in terms of sources of spiritual guidance, so I naturally felt quite marketed to and clicked the link. 

(Cosmopolitan is not, by the way, the pinnacle of pretty much anything, except sex tips like “put a donut on your partner’s dick and eat it off!” which isn’t so much a sex tip as it is a tip for getting a yeast infection)

The article in question wasn’t particularly deep, as articles go, and I knew what to expect scrolling down to Scorpio. Everything related to Scorpio is black and red and edgy. That is just how it goes. And look, I don’t consider myself to be particularly edgy (the name of this blog notwithstanding), but I do look good in both black and red, and I’ll take whatever edgy insights Cosmopolitan has and add them to my repertoire of “edgy things about Scorpios.” Anyway, I guessed early on that the card they’d throw out for Scorpio would be Death, and wouldn’t you know it, I was right.

Death isn’t really an edgy card, at least not when I’m reading. Death is change, pure and simple, and if you take away the skeleton on the card and the word “DEATH,” that’s really all it is. The end of one part of your life and the beginning of another. Circles starting anew. The release of things that aren’t serving you anymore and the embrace of things that will make your life better in the long run. And, yeah, that can be scary, but all change can be. It’s up to us to embrace it, even when it seems like jumping off a cliff.

I wonder if it’s because I’ve been suicidal in the past that death doesn’t scare me by any stretch of the imagination. I fear leaving my kids without me before they’re old enough to care and advocate for themselves. I fear the hurt that my death would cause. I don’t fear death itself, even not knowing or even having a solid belief about what comes next because it’s like… if it’s going to happen anyway, why fear it? Try to stay alive, yes, but do that because life is worth living, the universe is worth experiencing in this body you’ve been given, not because death is a scary monster.

(I do have beliefs about what happens after death, because I don’t really think that we’ve gone through all of this experience just for it to all get erased like a corrupt hard drive, but those beliefs are largely reincarnation based, not speeding mindlessly towards some eternal reward or punishment)

Nor do I really fear the process of death itself, of metabolic processes slowing and stopping. I follow this really great TikTok account (look, it’s a fun platform, alright?) where this hospice nurse talks about the dying process in terms people can understand, and when you hear some of the things she describes, it sounds really beautiful. People seem to get visited by their loved ones who’ve passed before, and they’re kept comfortable so that they can die as peacefully as possible. I also once read someone talking about a sort of electric storm in the brain in the moments before death and wonder if that’s the whole “life flashing before your eyes” thing that people talk about. Is it all very vivid and pulled out of living people’s perception of time? Is that last moment an eternity for someone who’s dying or is it just a flash?

As J. M. Barrie wrote, “to die will be an awfully big adventure.” 

Just, you know, not one I’m about yet. 

Because, being frank, suicidality and depression are VERY different from being curious about and fascinated by death. Suicidality is this desperation for things to change because you can’t stand the idea of them keeping on as is, painful blank day after painful blank day. It’s wanting the ride to stop so that you can get off because you’re not having fun. It is not looking at death in a way that says, “huh, this natural part of existence is a mystery and I want to know more about it, and I’m also not afraid of it,” but rather just a desperation for things to cease.

The last time I was in that place, I remember talking to my therapist about it with a lot of frustration, because I knew on every level that death is a permanent solution to a temporary problem. And I didn’t want a permanent solution. I just wanted a break, but I was getting to the point where things were so heavy that if a permanent break had been my only option, I might have taken it.

I am not there now. 

(if it seems as if I am repeating myself, it is because when you have been suicidal and start talking about death, everyone assumes the worst. This is me reassuring you a thousand million times over that I am okay)

(well, not okay, but not about to kill myself)

Anyway. I think the weirdness western culture has about death is why it ends up being this really 3edgy5me topic, where when you just talk about death at all, it automatically becomes this super alternative thing of “ah yes, you are bucking cultural norms,” and look, I’m not trying to buck cultural norms. I just don’t think we should be so weird and avoidant about death. Like it obviously sucks when someone you love dies and you’re not going to see them again in this lifetime, but that doesn’t mean death itself is this topic that should be held ten feet away from you with latex gloves (or whatever you prefer, if you have a latex allergy) or avoided in any conversation. If anything, I feel like talking about death and normalizing it helps when someone close to you dies. Instead of seeing their death as this absolutely terrible thing, the worst possible thing, you see it as another passage. One out of your view, but a passage just the same.

But then again, it’s not really my place to dictate how anyone views or thinks of death. And I can’t know for sure. But it’s a mystery that doesn’t scare me in the least.

Which is, in the end, very Scorpio of me. Batting 1000, Cosmopolitan. Well done.