Today, , I saw somebody's death.
a car on the side of the highway, and where the driver should have been, there was only fire.
nobody was standing outside of the car.
the emergency vehicles were just arriving, too late.
a few miles later, it was golden hour, and the road was sparse.
i thought: "is this the bardo realm?
maybe it was me who died in that car, and this is the beginnings of an afterlife."
the sunset, the road, and new years eve all seemed like metaphors a brain would invent in its last moments. i began to panic. my entire body felt flush and hot. i clutched the steering wheel with both hands. i tried to relax but my body wouldnt let me. if i were to panic at the critical moment of realizing i had died, my soul might get stuck somewhere bad.
this is exactly what a panic attack feels like.
my friend's appartment is near, so i go there. my hands are shaking. it used to be my apartment, too, until i moved, earlier this month. i happen to park next to another car that looks exactly like mine (more evidence in favor of having died). i knock on the door and call her on the phone. she can tell im not okay.
we talk and i begin to feel more normal.
time passes. i become convinced that i am, indeed, alive.
i have a party to go to. i was going to go home first, but time has passed, and the party is closer to here than there. i hope it will make me feel better.
it does not make me feel better. my failing to feel better is visually obvious to observers. they tell me so, not unkindly. i leave the party within 25 minutes of arriving.
some of them send me DMs like "are you okay?" and i tell them this story.
.
i have done psychedelics, and these are supposed to make you not fear death, but i still fear it.
more sepcifically, i fear the experience of leaving my body and waking up, disoriented, in another world.
i imagine that death is a hallucinatory and confusing process. like a fever dream.
ideas like "bardos" resonate with that intuition, but perhaps they are unsuitable, or harmful, for me to ruminate on
i do not want for my deathbed to feel like a trial or a test.
it is unkind-to-myself and absurd to think that there is any Consequence to whatever images/feelings my anxiety-addled brain spits out when reckoning with its own undoing.
i have done seances before. i have spoken to (what-i-sincerely-thought-was) the dead. at the time, it fit within a system, a narrative, that made it make sense. we thought that 'the self' split into 3 parts upon death:
1. the body decays
2. the soul takes only the most essential lessons and moves on to the Summerlands
3. some part of the personality remains contactable, and slowly fades away over the following Several years, depending on connections to the living.
i do not know what i think now.
.
if i were designing an introduction to the afterlife, it would go like this:
the deceased awakens in a black room. there is a chair and a desk. on the desk is a document with very clear wording, which explains the explains the entire situation.
"Congratulations! You have completed your life. Please fill out Form A for eternal rest, Form B for reunion with the divine, Form C for reincarnation as a giraffe, and/or Form D for oblivion."
.
fireworks are going off. i have been writing long enough