"Everyone dies alone."

I don't have a bucket list.

I didn't mean to stop there, but those words bring back so poignantly a paragraph you wrote a year ago that I can't for the life of me remember the train of thought.  I wonder if maybe that hasn't rubbed off on me, but I think it may have been the case for quite a while before you put those words down in an eloquent and coherent form.

Every time I watch Fight Club, where they're driving down the highway and Tyler Durden asks all of them to say something they wish they'd done/want to do before they die, I try to think of something.  And I always come up blank.  Sometimes I cheat and say something like jumping out of a plane, or going to Australia.  And while I'd love to do those, I could die happy having not done them.  They don't matter to me.  I think, as you said, that I've done everything I could want to do with this life.  I'm happy with the way I've lived it and with where I've ended up.

Which is very strange, because I can't get past what someone else once said about being afraid of dying before being ready.  There are still things I would like doing.  I'm on a path, professionally, that is showing me things I am absolutely in love with, intellectually, and will only continue doing that.  I love what I do.  And I want to keep doing it, I want to see what comes ahead.  I know that I have a future to look forward to, that if I was to die now, I'd miss out on it.

Yes, those last two paragraphs were completely contradictory, and I honestly have absolutely no idea which one resonates with me more.  They both do, and that's a problem, because I am logically inclined.  I don't like living with contradictions.  I guess I still have some time to decide which one of the two options is closer to the way I feel, since I'm not going anywhere for a while (unless an improbable health problem or accident arises in the near future, but that's a risk we all face).

On a slightly unrelated note and coming back more to the title of this post, I'm afraid of grenades.  Metaphorically.  If you've read a certain book, you'll understand, but most people haven't, and I don't particularly want to explain, so ask me and I'll tell you what to read.  I'm not afraid of death so much as I'm afraid of being left behind.  Is it selfish that sometimes I wished...just so I'd know what it'd be like?  I don't even need to ask, I know it is.  It's the sort of terrible thing you think but never admit to, except I've given up on not admitting to things.  It's selfish and terrible and I know I didn't mean it, but that doesn't mean I didn't want to know.

Likewise, I'm afraid of leaving people behind.  I'm afraid of hurting them.  If I wasn't, my life would be different.  I would have said something a long time before you kissed me.  I wouldn't have spent that summer in agony, I would have just taken what I had and run with it.  And see, here I am back to two years ago, but it's the closest example at hand, so I'll go with that.  Anyway, the point is that I don't know how to deal with this finite life.  I don't know if I like it or hate it, just like I'm never sure whether I like or hate myself.

And maybe one day I'll figure all of this out.  Maybe one day, I'll find a methodology for living that works for me.  Or maybe I won't, and I'll spend my downtime as I do now, contemplating the afterlives I don't believe in and the meanings I don't accept.  I think I'll be okay.  I hope.