I recently became afraid of dying.
Recently meaning: in the last year, a few months after a hospitalization. I did not see heaven or hell or even get close to any brush with mortality that, justifiably, sends some to fear their mortality. I experienced a personal, existential bleakness that felt like a threatening, eternal prison. So many others have gone through very real threats of a quality that mine was very really not (cf. the Thai kids), but the experience was personal, so there you are.
Not long after the event, I–unfortunately–read the Harlan Ellison short story I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream, in which a small group of people have been tortured for a century by a computer that was built for war and rebelled in anguish, killing the entire population but those five. In retribution for being created only as a weapon, he gave them gross physical alteration and tortured them with depravation and insanity, yet kept alive and uncertain of what punishment would be visited next. This is a story that you should not read if you’re on-or-close-to the edge.
Though much diminished, any random event can trigger the memory, but honestly it can appear without prompting. I’m tied down, in emptiness, forever. I think: “maybe that’s how it will end,” and there’s no option of a pleasant or absence of pleasant eternity, just existence. As a nearly lifelong atheist it’s a weird feeling. Is this how the non-secular feel throughout their lives? More important: is this how those with PTSD feel and, if so, I can’t imagine the grief.