My Elementary Intro to Existentialism
This work is a short recollection of when I first developed thanatophobia & general concerns regarding my existence in the abstract. Inescapable existential anxiety has played a significant role in shaping my intellectual pursuits ever since, and I feel this story provides some important context as to who I am and why I write.
December 2025
I was eleven when I realized I wouldn’t live forever. Up until that point, I had yet to consider the limits of my existence. I can’t recall what exactly provoked this realization, but I remember feeling suddenly distressed and rushing to my mom’s side for comfort. We sat down together on her bed, and I asked her opinion on the legitimacy of an afterlife. Being an atheist, she told it to me straight: there was no such thing (as far as she was concerned). I accepted her words as definitive truth, for I had been raised without God. However, that’s not to say I wasn’t deeply troubled by her answer.
Later in the week, I brought up the issue to a boy I knew during recess. His family wasn’t religious either, and we both agreed that the existence of heaven seemed absurd.
There was a girl in our grade—Evelyn—who often reprimanded us for using the Lord’s name in vain. When we encountered her at lunch that day, the boy and I shared a knowing glance. Laughing, we wondered how anyone could believe in an idea that was (in our eyes) so overtly ridiculous.
Months later, perhaps sometime around mid-sixth grade, I came across the youtube channel of a young woman dedicated to detailing her experience with terminal illness. Video after video I watched, scrolling through her account with morbid fascination.
Having been briefly pronounced dead after a traumatic incident in her teen years, the woman claimed that general anesthesia provided the most accurate simulation of the real deal. She felt that her repeated exposure to anesthesia (a consequence of lifelong health crises) had adequately prepared her for death. Eventually, I reached her last post. It was a relatively mundane lifestyle video; no formal goodbye or announcement that she would take a hiatus from content creation. On the contrary, she actually seemed rather hopeful about her situation. The woman spoke with a cheery expression on her face, excitedly sharing some good news she’d received from her doctors. But when my eyes strayed towards the video’s description, I realized that the video I was currently watching was posted nearly a year ago.
Despite my obvious anticipation of this being the woman’s eventual reality—after all, terminal illness was the central theme of her content—my heart still sank. I opened a new tab and entered the woman’s name in my search bar.
Deceased, the webpage read, marking her passing as a date many months back. I stared blankly at my screen and listened to my heartbeat climb up, up, up.
She who was supposed to be the most prepared to die was not, in fact, prepared at all.
My heart's frenzied pounding reverberated throughout my body, shaking not only my skull but now upsetting my soul in tandem. I empathized deeply with the woman, imagining exactly how I would’ve felt standing within her shoes. Never before had I so directly confronted the issue of human mortality; never before had I recognized the way in which my body's physical vulnerability implicated the longevity of my consciousness. I squeezed my shoulder and felt not myself, but soft tissue layered atop muscle layered atop bone. My brain rattled against its porcelain casing, and I rattled right along with it. In that moment, I recognized my existence to be one conditioned upon a small collection of fleshy material remaining well-aligned. This conclusion terrified me then, and rightfully so; I remain extremely concerned with this matter. I hope to eventually find some sort of religious philosophy that I can stand to actually believe, as perhaps it could alleviate my fear to some degree.