I honestly thought that I’d be braver or more stoic about it, but I’m really just fucking terrified. I have severe health anxiety and OCD and I’ve spent literally years worrying every since day about some rare illness that would come along and take me out, but now that it’s actually happening I almost feel like I can’t accept it. My mind is like a record skipping - it won’t allow me to go beyond fear and into acceptance. I keep going over everything in my head, all the time I spent digging into a pit of despair and worry and not being present in my own life - it was all such a fucking waste. I could have been spending it with my family and with my husband, but instead I was wrapped up in my own shit and naively thought I’d “fix” it someday and it would all be okay. The irony of it is that I’m pretty sure all the worrying and all the fear is what made me the way I am now, and what’s going to kill me is actually *me*.

I know that death is natural. I know that everybody dies. I just don’t feel ready to.

I can tell the clock is ticking and it’s getting louder and louder every minute. I want desperately for this to be yet another one of ‘those times‘ when I was just as convinced, but all the evidence in front of me says this is different. This is for *real*. 

I’ve started writing goodbye letters for everyone but I don‘t know what to say. There’s a lot of pressure to say the right thing and leave a good lasting impression. I had hoped to have had the chance to actually say goodbye properly, in person, but that isn’t going to happen. I hope the people I love know that I didn’t avoid them out of neglect or on purpose, it’s just that this beast inside me wouldn’t let me live, and I wasn’t able to tame it before it devoured me from the inside out. I’m really, really sorry. I hope they can forgive me and that I’m remembered fondly, that they think about me with warmth and affection. 

I hope they’ll be okay.

I don’t believe in an afterlife, but maybe there is something out there or maybe we’ll all just circle back around. Maybe my random collection of atoms will come together again next time and I’ll get a chance to do things over. That would be pretty nice. 

I didn’t think this is how it would end for me. Hubris, I know. Why am I so fucking special, right? Spoiler: I’m not. I’m 32 years old and I guess I had a pretty good run, all things considered. That doesn’t really help but I think people are supposed to feel that way. 

I’m not really sure what to do now to make myself more at peace. I just wanted to put this out there so its out of *me*, and maybe this will help calm this fearful part of me down enough so I can spend the last bit of my life actually living it.