A Lust for Death

For the past several years I’ve been infatuated with death, trying to understand myself and grow into the person I know I’m meant to be.
My relationship with death started at a very young age with my great grandmother’s death. It was the first showcase in which I saw mass mourning. I didn’t get it back then, I felt nothing. I barley ever got to speak with her, by the time I could interact with her she was blind and losing her hearing.
The second taste that stuck with me was my mother’s suicide attempt. She wasn’t in my life a lot around that time, I remember everyone rushed out the house for her and I wanted to see her too, but she refused me. I didn’t see her for a while. The third encounter that stuck with me was my cousin Denzel.
I was told we were like cousins as kids, but when we were in middle school he took his own life. Looking at his corpse I thought he was at peace, his skin leathered, eyes sewn shut. I thought he was free. No longer tormented by the stresses and anguish of life I thought he was lucky to actually have the gall to follow through with it.
Fast forward to covid, I’m in highschool. My familial relationships are degrading, I’m misunderstood by everyone and I misunderstand myself but I want something more. The world is paused, death is a foot, and I am free. No stressors, no mental or physical prisons, I wander the world. I make something for myself, I’m free. The summer breeze is one of a kind, the stillness in the air comforts me. Work is brought home, the office life of my grandfather is set before me and I watch it daily. A man decays in front of a screen in exchange for a taste of freedom. ~ I would rather die ~

Lockdown ‘ends’ regular life ‘resumes’ I can’t go back to how things were. I was free and I feel coerced into slavery. Get an office job to live comfortably, I just saw what waited for me at the end of that cycle.

I keep thinking of Denzel, he’s lucky to not have to deal with this. I don’t want to go to college, I don’t want to be a slave, why is this how things are accepted, I wish I could take my life too.

Senior year of highschool I got with my ex and she said that we couldn’t stay together if I didn’t go to college too, so I did that. I was scared to lose her and lose my support system I built with her. I didn’t want to do any of this but I wanted to feel in love.
In college I followed in my grandfather’s footsteps and majored in mechanical engineering, that same semester a deep depression found me. I didn’t want any of this life that I was making, I can’t sell myself to make weapons of war for cash, I can’t pretend like I was at all interested in even being on campus. I failed all my classes and started reading.

I told my uncle I would rather die than do this, but what was next. Shortly after this depressive spiral began I tore my labrum and need surgery.

My love for fitness was reset, the thing that kept me a float while struggling to stay sane in the dorms was ripped away from. I had to accept letting go of something I loved again.

Lost in books and meditation, death circled me over and over again. I wouldn’t end my life as I thought I was in love but some piece of me needed to die. A shift had started.

Many versions of me in the past had died before, so what’s new about any of this?
I felt that by accepting it, it would expedite my growth. I needed to die, I needed to shed, I needed to die so I could live.

I was told me and Denzel were like brothers, I rationalized his death as freedom, I never understood it and don’t think I ever will. I internalized it as he chose the route of death so I must live even if I don’t want to.

I shed my past layers, my past lives, my past mindsets, day by day, a new piece of me dies, a new piece of me thrives.
My living circumstances worsen, generational trauma finds me, my ex breaks up with me, I wade through the pain, I face my fears, I become desensitized. I lust for discomfort, I run from pleasure, I shed, I shed, I shed. I live to die.

I create to die. My mantra becomes create or die. Follow through or die. Positive affirmations become echoes to kill the person I was yesterday. What do I grow for? Is there a goal? No. I go until I have no more piece of me to express.

I exist for self expression, anything that obscures that must die.

I quit jobs that don’t value me. I leave people that don’t see me for me. I move on. My breath stifled. I’ve found comfort in the pressure.

I create I keep going. I’ve been at 100% for months and months non stop. Fatigue creeps up on me, I’m tired, but I keep going. Don’t stop. You’ll die if you stop. But will I?

I’ve been going for so long

Creating for so long

Shedding my old self identities and thoughts of self

What have I made for myself

The time flew by

I’m tired

I’m back in school, I wanted to drop out
But I came back, I did find something I enjoy even though I hate it here

I don’t hate myself anymore

I stop for a moment, I like the life I’ve made for myself

I love the life I’ve made for myself

I don’t need to survive anymore, I can live

Make art or die, the mantra I adopted in the dark, fearful of the other options that waited before me.

But I’ve grown, I trust myself, I can breathe, I can live.