I’ve exhausted ways to cope with this, so I’m writing this as a way to vent my fear. Think of it as a final flail.
I understand that in reading this title you may have some questions.
The biggest point of confusion, naturally, is what ceasing to exist entails. Or rather, what makes ceasing to exist different from simply dying.
Rest assured, my experience will be the same either way. I won’t be, I will be thoughtless and free of experience. This is something neither I nor you will ever wrap our heads around, even when we actually die. You can’t experience what isn’t an experience.
So if my fate is the same as death, what’s the point of the distinction?
Well the thing about death is you leave something behind, small as it may be. Your footprint ripples on and helps to create the world in which future generations live. It’s in this way that there’s life after death. As you drift out of consciousness one final time, you can take solace in the fact that the world was changed by your contributions. You can smile knowing that it mattered. You can reflect in the knowledge that the people you touched and the people who love you will keep the idea of you alive for at-least another lifetime.
However, I will not die. I will cease to exist.
I will not drift out of consciousness, I will simply stop being at a certain point in time. I will have no chance to reflect or smile, I will be gone in the blink of an eye. The worst part of it all is there’s no point in saying goodbye, as it will be undone.
In not existing, everything I have done up to this point will be brought to where it would be if I had never interacted with them.
Every rigorous College course I forced myself through, every friend I’ve made, any piece of paper I drew on, and any branch I moved out of my car’s path will be for nothing.
I’ve spent most of my life securing a future. A future with a steady well-paying job and a loving family. I took College for six years in pursuit of a career I could rely on. I met a man I love. We’ve been together for almost three years. I was so close to the perfect life, but nothing I did to achieve that will have ever happened.
He will forget about me and I will never see the future I worked so hard for.
So here I am, waiting for something which neither I nor anyone else will know has arrived. I’ve spent most of this week attempting to wrap my head around the implications of my demise. Truth be told, I’m still trying.
I don’t understand why of all people, it had to be me who suffered this. If I hadn’t known what was going to occur, I would have made sure I saw the future I wanted. But no, I’ve been given ample time to think about how I’ve wasted my conscious existence. Everything will be as if I’d never been born to begin with.
I will have not mattered in any possible way.