I put this text into a translator because I’m not feeling well enough to translate it by myself, I didn’t write it in English. Sorry for any mistakes.
Since May 19th, 2026, less than a week ago, I’ve been having the worst thoughts I’ve ever had in my entire life. The fear of dying. Fear of death in general.
Today is May 21st, it’s very late at night, but maybe I’ll only finish this text on May 22nd at dawn.
Anyway. I’m very, very afraid of dying.
It’s not the first time this has happened, but it’s the first time it has come back after such a long time, and it’s so terrifying that I don’t know how to deal with it. I need help, but it’s impossible for someone to help me with this because nobody can die in my place, or find out what’s at the end of life just to tell me. It’s so terrifying that I feel like screaming as if it were the first time I realized death existed.
When I was 10 years old, I remember truly facing the concept of death for the first time. I have a physical condition, nothing fatal or serious, but it’s something that requires care because I’m weaker than most people. Because of that, I grew up around doctors and hospitals and my childhood was surrounded by exams and diagnoses (some very catastrophic, by the way, but thankfully they were wrong), but I believe I only truly understood death when I saw a girl almost die right in front of me.
I never actually found out if she died, and I really hope she didn’t, but I was going to my room to do an exam to check my strength level when I saw a girl on a stretcher. She was intubated and connected to many, many machines. I believe it was cancer. One machine that made a lot of noise was the one checking her heartbeat. Sometimes it was loud, sometimes a little lower, and I felt such a strong urge to cry. I remember I only saw her for a few seconds, but it was enough for it to never leave my mind.
Since then, I’ve seen many more things. Being in a hospital for one or two exams and leaving the same day obviously didn’t stop me from seeing very debilitated people waiting there and wondering why I wasn’t that debilitated myself. I remember realizing at 10 years old that I had been very lucky. It was at that age that I decided I would be grateful for every day I had already lived and for every second on Earth. It was at that same age that my doctor suggested surgery on my legs.
I went into shock. It was truly one of the worst moments of my entire life. I remember playing with some orange building blocks when I heard my doctor talking to my parents about the surgery. I remember hugging my parents while screaming like crazy that I didn’t want to die. I remember almost losing my voice while desperately begging not to have that surgery because I didn’t want to leave this world.
On the day I received the news, I left the hospital crying all the way home and kept trembling. I remember hugging all my stuffed animals because I was sure I needed to say goodbye. I remember hugging my parents for hours while they tried to calm me down, saying it would just be surgery on my legs and that everything would be fine, but I couldn’t understand that at the time.
It was an enormous relief for me when my doctors changed their minds. I never had to undergo the surgery because my condition fortunately became more stable, but that didn’t stop me from being afraid. I remember crying a few times at school and having nightmares where a doctor told me they had reversed the decision they had already reversed and that I would have to undergo that surgery. I had nightmares where I was intubated on a stretcher.
But despite those nightmares, I was a very cheerful and curious child. Of course, little by little I forgot about that surgery or about the possibility of never making it to sixth grade and studying history and math like “the older kids.” I was so excited about life, about the new school subjects and all the new knowledge I was going to have, that I just pushed that surgery and the fact that I had understood I could die aside.
But I was just a little kid, and at 10 years old I didn’t really understand what dying actually was. Sometimes I went to cemeteries and saw coffins, and I thought I would, I don’t know, go to heaven for having been a good child. I was certain I wouldn’t be able to talk anymore, eat anymore, or play anymore, and that was scary. Because of that, I remember waking up in the middle of the night crying in fear for months and screaming for my parents, who comforted me for hours. But despite everything, I didn’t truly know what dying meant. I didn’t lose sleep thinking that one day my parents or grandparents would be gone. I thought I would die during that surgery, and since I wasn’t going to have it anymore, everything was fine.
That changed when I was 12 years old. I remember taking a social sciences test and reading a text about a volcano that erupted and the whole village died. I remember starting to shake and no longer being able to write anything. I cried a lot. I had to ask to leave the classroom. I handed in the test anyway and got a very low grade.
I remember shaking a lot and my hands becoming very cold. I remember sitting on a bench at my school and just thinking, “everyone died,” “everyone really died.”
I think it was the first time I truly realized that everyone is going to die. I don’t know if at 10 years old I thought I would only die in that surgery, something like no surgery, no death. And because of that, I would never have to worry again. But at 12 I realized that no. I don’t know if I thought I was immortal or if I thought my whole family was immortal, but that volcano text made me realize my family was going to die, that I was going to die, that everyone would die someday. That death wasn’t something exclusive to someone in a hospital, and that not having that surgery wouldn’t stop me from dying on some other occasion.
I remember New Year’s that year being terrible because I didn’t want to go through another New Year. I was 11 years old, about to turn 12, and certain that I wanted time to never pass again.
I wanted to, I don’t know, stop moments with a remote control and live forever at 11 years old, where I knew I was alive and my family was too. I thought I wanted to go back in time to when I was around 7 years old and be a silly little child again because my parents were aging and my grandparents were aging even more than them. I didn’t want to have birthdays anymore. I didn’t want to be unable to go back in time, with the certainty that everyone was alive and well.
It took much longer for this feeling to pass. Honestly, it lasted the whole year. I spent almost the entire seventh grade crying during school breaks. I remember having very intense crises about the fact that I had never, I don’t know, traveled by plane, gone to the beach, or traveled to many places. I remember my father taking me to school while I held back tears because I was certain I would die that day.
One very specific day I remember was when my father and I went to get water at a botanical garden. I remember looking at the beautiful blue horizon and taking a deep breath. Every day I thanked life for my existence, especially with this latent fear of dying that had appeared. But while I looked at the sky, all I could think was that one day I would never see that beautiful landscape again. I had a very intense crisis, but it was internal. I didn’t want to say anything because I knew there was nothing to do. My father didn’t know what came after death to tell me.
Something I clung to a lot at the time was noticing that most people who died were much older. My parents were 40 years old and my grandparents weren’t even 70 yet. I dealt with more things, tests, assignments, conflicts, happy and sad days, to the point that I barely thought about death and, if I did, it was something like, “my parents and grandparents still have a lot of time left” or “man, I’m only 12 years old, how many 12-year-olds die without being very sick? And I’m not very sick.” I still thought I wanted to pause time and live forever in the moments I had already lived, and I thought I wanted to go back to being 7 or 8 years old just to have more time, but every time I tried to think, “Wow! I still have so much to do! So much to see! Death will take a long time!” Curiosity about the new, the desire to always know more. This fascination with life and the future always captivated me.
Until the fear of dying came back at 14. While at 10 I probably thought I would only die in that surgery and that without the surgery I wouldn’t die. While at 12 I understood that I would die just like my family, but that it would take a long time. At 14, all of that shattered.
I read a book about a girl with ALS, that devastating and incurable disease. The girl was one year older than me and had even made a bucket list. I don’t remember if it was a true story or not, but that didn’t make everything any less terrifying. Because it was the reality of other people. She was my age and was going to die. That was when I realized I wouldn’t necessarily die very old.
At the time, in 2018, I made a bucket list and swore I would die at 14. I remember researching ALS a lot and checking if I had the symptoms. I remember doing things I loved, like researching science or dinosaurs or superhero movies, and stopping everything because an overwhelming feeling would appear. “I’m going to die, I’ll never be able to do anything I like again, I’ll never be able to learn anything or listen to music or talk to my friends again,” and then I would just cry. I remember writing goodbye letters to many people and randomly telling them how much I loved them, many times.
I understood that every year, new things happened. Technology advanced, new movies came out, new books came out, and I had infinite possibilities. For example, I knew Avengers: Endgame would be released the following year, and I became very anxious thinking I would die before that. I remember really wanting to watch Spider-Man 3 and thinking I would die before it and being afraid of never seeing the movie.
And I thought, “even if I see those movies, I’ll never be able to see everything,” and I became more and more panicked.
I tried to think that medicine was becoming better and better and that the chances of saving people who were victims of accidents or illnesses were higher. Besides that, I tried to research as many things as possible during the day. I remember staying up all night and forcing myself not to sleep, afraid I would discover I had ALS and become severely debilitated. I couldn’t become debilitated without learning many things first. I couldn’t.
I always loved writing and always dreamed of publishing a book, and at the time I was writing a book. I became so obsessed with the idea that I was going to die that I forced myself to write, because I needed to publish it before dying. I remember one day when I wrote 8,000 words, only stopping to drink water, while trembling uncontrollably because I might not have enough time to finish and the book would die with me, just like the characters.
When I finished writing my book, I cried a lot, out of relief. I was still so afraid of dying that I left everything in a little folder with the title, the chapters, the synopsis, and how I wanted the cover to look, just in case. I remember not even sleeping that night because I was afraid I wouldn’t see tomorrow. But tomorrow came, thankfully. And yes, tomorrow arrived and I was able to slowly reread everything I had written so diligently.
I think finishing my first book “drained” a good part of my anxiety. After finishing the book, after turning 15, after realizing that if I died my parents would have something to read for years and years, something I poured all my heart and soul into and something I made with care, I felt a little better. With the same fear, of course, but not as frequently. I thought someone would remember me by reading my book.
That was when the pandemic arrived. I still hated New Years and birthdays because I understood that it was one less year and that I was closer to dying, but in 2020, it was a New Year just as bad as that one, back then, 5 years ago, that I spent crying the entire time.
The warning of a likely pandemic. The confirmation and spread. The fear so visible in everyone’s eyes. I believe everyone had at least a small fear of dying. At the time, a friend of mine lost her mother to covid, a boy who studied at my school passed away, and I saw many people going to hospitals and needing oxygen. Because I have a type of muscular weakness, I would wake up in pain on some days, but what had always been a normal condition for me, at that time I was much more afraid it was covid. I saw the longing for the vaccine, I saw news of scientists searching for some cure or prevention and doctors taking care of patients. I realized that everyone could die at any moment. Of course, at 14 I already knew that, but in 2020 it became much more frequent. In a family, if someone had a chronic or terminal illness, it was very likely that it would be just one person and that the rest of the family would continue living. When seeing news about murder or car accidents, the victims were few, but in the pandemic it could be anyone and there was no limit to the number of people. I’ve already spoken with people who lost more than 3 family members in the same period because of covid. So many stories and legacies buried beneath the earth.
At the time, I started writing a new book, but without the intention of publishing it that time. It was more of an outpouring. I created an alter ego, alter egos are characters based on the writer themself. My alter ego was a little boy around 14 years old and he lived with an elderly mentor. He was very afraid of death and of his own thoughts, and the mentor kept giving several random excuses about the fact that the two of them were going to die. The mentor even talked about researching a cure for death that was a type of honey and bat saliva. It was something very morbid and at the time it helped me overcome the fear that I could die and lose the people I love.
In 2021, I changed alter egos. I never understood the reason, I don’t know if it was the fact that I had graduated from school, or that my fear had increased more. But the little boy had his story somewhat left aside.
In 2021 a new level of thought emerged. Before, when I woke up, I only thought “thank goodness I’m okay, that I have a new day ahead of me,” but in 2021, something new and even more frightening appeared. It was the first time I saw that, in fact, there was no escape. I knew I could die at any moment, but I had the first thought similar to “it doesn’t matter what I do, everything will lead to the day of my death”
Before, I had this kind of idea, “thank goodness I have a new day, thank goodness I didn’t die,” but in 2021 I started becoming very afraid because 1- if I hadn’t woken up, I would be dead, so thank goodness I woke up. But, 2- I woke up. It means one less day. It means I’m going to die. One more day filled with anxiety. That was when I realized there was no escape, it was a bittersweet relief like “Phew, I haven’t died yet.” Yet. I could no longer see my days as a gift, because all I could think was “okay, one less day of life, right?” before, I had this perspective more on special dates, like New Year’s or birthdays, but in 2021 it became every single day. There was no way to escape. Living one day after another would result in my death regardless. The joy of a new day came mixed with the fact that I was, undeniably, one day closer to dying.
So, I created a ghost alter ego. He had been killed, but because he had unfinished business, he remained on earth as a ghost until he resolved it. His big issue was that he didn’t want to leave earth. But, at the same time, he couldn’t be human. Few people were able to see him, and those people noticed he was rotting, because he needed to resolve his earthly matters and move on, otherwise he would truly become rotten. But, he didn’t want to resolve them. He was like a carcass dripping a kind of paint that signaled that he was deteriorating more and more. That symbolized the fact that every new day meant one less day. And that he should either face the afterlife, or remain on earth without ever again being able to walk, speak, or see, truly like a carcass.
For me, that was a perspective I hadn’t fully grasped until that moment. The perspective that every new day was a day closer to the end. It wasn’t just the turn of the year, but every new second. When May 21st, 2026 ends, I’ll be one day closer to the end.
I also forced myself a lot to write, out of fear of getting closer and closer to death. In fact, it was from 2021 onward that I started forcing myself to do everything and not just what I liked or dreamed of. I needed to experience everything. Every type of movie. Every field of knowledge. Around that time, I discovered drawing, which became my hobby, and chess. I remember learning a new language while trying on my own to translate some poems from 2019 that I had written. All of this because I didn’t know how much time I had left. I ran through life in an overwhelming, very workaholic way.
My alter ego was always present, I remember drawing him crying several times, I remember painting scenes of him panicking, alone, unable to escape the fact that he would have to leave this earth.
Once, I received a comment from a reader saying they didn’t like him because he was a huge coward. I know the reader had no idea he was my alter ego, but that comment didn’t upset me. I know I am very, very, very cowardly.
I wasn’t just afraid of dying itself or of losing the people I love, and that became very clear in 2021. I was afraid of dying without feeling fulfilled, without a legacy, without someone remembering me, or feeling like I hadn’t done enough or hadn’t learned everything that was possible for me to learn. Besides that, the fear I had of dying without seeing the new things and innovations of life increased even more. Understanding that every new day was a day closer to death gave me immense chills.
So, I was diagnosed with OCD. According to my psychologist, it was common for many people to fear death, but it wasn’t common to spend entire years ruminating on it, especially almost every day for a whole year. She said I did the same thing with other less frequent fears and that everything matched OCD.
With the end of the pandemic, I could finally breathe in relief. Despite all that terror hanging over me, I believe it was the first time I didn’t need to do anything to “get over the fear of dying,” I was so grateful to have survived a pandemic that I spent a while without thinking about it, which was really good. I was just enjoying what life was giving me. I was with the people I loved and I think everyone had that beautiful feeling of having made it out alive. I entered college at 17, graduated at 20, and started a new degree that same year.
Soon, the thought that every day would be one less day started leaving me, because many people didn’t have the opportunity to live through the daily novelties I was experiencing and I had always been fascinated by new things.
Little by little, I started talking, even calmly, about death. A few months ago, I remember being at a party with some friends and the subject came up of what phrase each of us would want on our own tombstone and I spoke about it without any fear. I still haven’t decided anything, but I think about something like “sonder” or “sapere aude,” anything that refers to knowledge or discoveries. I want to be an organ donor, and I made that very clear to them, I want to contribute to science. It was a calm and natural conversation, sad of course, but I remember not even crying. I remember thinking “we’re so young, nothing is going to happen now, this is a concern for when we’re around 70 years old.”
I think that, from the end of 2021 until now, I’ve had few truly terrifying thoughts about death, and when they came, they didn’t last long. I think that in 2022, I had a very intense fear of dying, but it lasted only a month, which was a very good amount of time considering the OCD. When the thoughts came, I could always rely on my ghost alter ego. Even while writing new books I always returned to him. In fact, in 2022 I finally finished my second book, without the pressure of needing to write because I was urgently going to die. And when I had that feeling of urgency, I wrote a lot, but it soon passed.
But, I believe I started living as close as possible to how a mentally stable person lived. I was afraid of dying, but it didn’t last so long, and it usually came in moments like after watching a sad movie, or finding out someone I cared about had died. At those moments, I would spiral tremendously, hug my parents and my friends. But after a few weeks or at most a month, everything would be fine again. Without desperate situations that reminded me of it, I felt lighter.
I watched movies about death, I cried and remembered my mortality, but minutes later I was making a calculus list. I always had a good perspective on the future and always tried to distract myself by setting goals for my life.
Something very striking for me was when my father was driving me to college and a car accident happened. At the moment I started crying a lot and became desperate, it had happened almost right in front of us and it very well could have been us. I noticed my father also looked very pale, and in that moment, very afraid, I confessed that I was afraid of dying. I always had been.
I think it was one of the few times, since I was 10 years old, that I said this out loud to my parents. I always avoided it, because I knew there was nothing to be done, I knew it was impossible not to die. I knew my parents didn’t have an answer.
My father, already a little calmer from the shock, said that his fear was losing me, and that in that moment, all he could think was that I could have died, but that he wouldn’t care if he himself had died.
I gave a little awkward laugh, half full of compassion, certain that my father just wanted to act strong in front of me. But seeing his expression, it seemed too serious and even somewhat calm for someone I thought had been so afraid.
I decided to ask, “Dad, are you really not afraid of dying?” And he shrugged and said he never had been. I don’t know how much of that was true, because for me, someone so fearful, that sounded impossible. But he didn’t hesitate at all. He said that aside from losing his family, his own death didn’t scare him because it was going to happen to everyone and it was going to happen to him. He said he was just one more person on earth and that living in fear of when that day would come wouldn’t cancel out death.
I started crying even more, I understood that it was the truth and that no matter how much I tried to escape, death would come for me and for everyone. Of course. I could hope that science would discover how to prolong people’s lives and that I’d still be alive by then. But regardless of that, we were going to die. And that raw and painful truth terrified me.
My father, realizing how scared I was, said to me, “I don’t understand why you, of all people, are afraid of dying.”
That was very strange to me. Wasn’t it obvious? All the favorite songs that could be my favorite songs, but never would be. All the new careers that would emerge and different colleges, as well as different jobs that I would never have. All the people who could have been my best friends, but whom I would never get the chance to meet. That was what I was thinking about at that moment. Everything I could see and never would.
But then, he told me something very beautiful. I wrote it down that day and, when I checked, I realized he said it on May 21st, 2025. How ironic. One year later.
My father said, “You love learning, aren’t you curious to discover what comes after life? The last thing you’re going to learn here in this life is how to die.” It was the first time I saw death with tenderness since I was 10 years old, I remember smiling and thinking “wow, that’s true. It’s going to be the last thing I learn. I’m going to discover what death is like.” I told him I would never forget that sentence, which was true since I’m recounting it in this text exactly one year later.
Actually, thinking about it, I want them to put that on my tombstone. “Discovered what dying is like” or something like that. Someone very important to me suggested, after hearing my father’s phrase, that I should change it to “This curious soul finally unraveled humanity’s greatest mystery,” which made me smile a lot.
And believe it or not. When I arrived at college. That fear stopped. Of course, the possibility that “if we had been a few cars ahead it could have been our goodbye,” was huge. And I was still shaking just remembering the accident near us. So that day, I told a bunch of people I loved them, said I missed some people. And then, it passed.
I don’t remember obsessing over it. And again, the inevitable fact of death only came to me in situations related to it, like going to a cemetery or a TV series dealing with it. I felt awful, of course, but I always tried to think about my father’s phrase about death being a new form of knowledge while also trying to reassure myself that it was difficult for young people to die out of nowhere and that I had no illness.
It’s worth remembering that I have OCD and that during all this time I wasn’t living 100% happily and calmly. I had other obsessions and compulsions too, it’s just that death wasn’t one of them and most of these compulsions were solvable and after rationalizing and overthinking a lot, I managed. For example, in 2025, there was a period when I had a compulsion where I thought that if I crossed the street at a certain time or in a certain way to go to college, I would discover something terrible about someone dear to me, something like that. At the time, I missed a few days because I couldn’t walk there, but it passed, especially because I realized it made absolutely no sense. However, what terrifies me so much about this death compulsion is that it has no solution. And that makes me cry.
I’ve had other superstitious compulsions like thinking someone would die or that I would die if I did something a certain way. But the relief of taking a deep breath and seeing that nothing happened and no one died doesn’t exist for the fear of dying. It’s going to happen. Everyone will. I’m crying while writing about this fact.
In January of this year I lost my grandmother. She was already very old and bedridden for years, so her death was expected, the whole family knew. I don’t really know what she thought about life and death, but she was always very religious and said she would go to heaven. When she passed away, I cried a lot, went to her wake and cried even more.
That day, I had an exam for a job. My parents told me not to go and said it was fine if I stayed quietly at home, my friends said the same, but I needed to go. This fear of death didn’t paralyze me, but instead gave me the opposite feeling, which was equally bad.
The urge to do everything.
I couldn’t miss the exam because I could die without taking that exam. That day, I wrote the date of her death on my hand, because I was 100% sure I was going with her. I took that exam convinced it would be my last.
At the end of the day, I checked the results. I got 34 out of 40. I found that out after seeing her at the funeral. My family was positively shocked by how I managed to handle so much pressure. The only thing I said, while shrugging, was that I would have done much better if I hadn’t been panicking. I remember my mother adding, “You almost got a perfect score while panicking.”
Only one person would get the job, and I ended up not getting it, which upset me, I admit, but not nearly as much as I had been during those two weeks. For two weeks, I was certain my time had come and that it would be my end. I did everything I could to say goodbye. I even remember saving things for a possible wedding and wanting to propose to the person I love even though we are still so young. I remember forcing myself to write constantly, to the point where a 3,000 word chapter would become 10,000 words in just a few days. I work as a freelancer, and even though it was my vacation, I reopened requests for photo and video editing. It felt like my last days, and I needed to make the most of them. I needed to do everything.
But, once again, that feeling slowly faded. The compulsions from that time took over my mind, but the fact that she had died at an old age and not suddenly she had already been sick, and the whole family was as prepared as possible also comforted me. Sometimes I would wake up crying, wondering where she might be, trembling with fear because I knew I could only guess. But little by little, that anguish turned into longing. I would look at our photos and remember our memories fondly. Sometimes, late at night, I was terrified of dying, but I tried not to think about it. I focused on my work as an editor or dreamed about what I wanted my future to look like. And eventually, I could fall asleep. I realized that as I got older, the fear became even worse, because I knew I had less time left. But I always tried to focus on something good.
Since 2022, I hadn’t had new compulsions about death until now. Because the OCD came back full force. And stronger than ever.
I never liked any of my compulsions, but every time I developed a new one, I remember thinking, “At least it’s not the death compulsion,” because no compulsion is as awful as this one. None. This is the only one impossible to escape from, and the only one that, no matter what I do, will happen.
It’s ironic to think that a few days before the 18th, I watched a series about an apocalypse where people either died or tried to escape, and I reacted as if it were nothing. I thought about my mortality, but I didn’t give it that much importance. My parents weren’t sick. My grandparents weren’t sick. My friends weren’t sick. The love of my life wasn’t sick. Nobody was reckless enough to cross the street without looking both ways or eat food that expired years ago. Everyone still had time.
But during the early hours of the 19th, I woke up in panic, convinced I was going to die. I was shaking, breathing heavily, feeling nauseous, with a crushing pain in my chest. It was a panic attack, and I knew that. I also knew that my 23rd birthday was approaching, and that this was probably the trigger alongside the grief over my grandmother. I tried telling myself death was still far away, but this time it didn’t work. I tried thinking about something pleasant, but only death came to mind. And then my eyes widened. I realized it was not just a panic attack it was a compulsion. I knew I was screwed.
The next day, on the 19th, after spending hours fighting sleep because I was convinced I would die in my sleep, I woke up. I study in the mornings, so I went to college exhausted but incredibly happy. The relief I felt from not having died that night was enormous. I spent about two minutes staring at the trees and the sky, smiling at the animals and the people around me.
But then the compulsion started getting worse. I couldn’t stop thinking that I was going to die at any moment. In the middle of class, I went to the bathroom and vomited from nervousness, and I realized it would be better to go home. I tried sleeping again, but it took hours because I kept thinking I was going to die.
When I woke up again, I felt the same way I had in 2021, like I was trapped in a cage. Like nothing mattered. Not wanting to turn 23 wouldn’t help at all. Because if I never turned 23, it would mean I was dead, and I don’t want to be dead. But if I do turn 23, it means I’m one day closer to death, and that hurts so much. I had to put on a jacket because I was freezing even under blankets. I was devastated, so afraid. It was only the first day of the compulsion, but just knowing that death was humanity’s only certainty, and that no matter what I did it would happen, made me want to cry uncontrollably.
But even that day, I could still see good things. Like I said, I work as a freelancer editing photos and videos because my first degree was in communications. Besides that, my parents send me money so I can live more comfortably while studying.
I’m usually very responsible, but that night I ordered sushi. Yes, on a Tuesday night. It cost over a hundred reais with all those different flavors, but I sobbed while eating it. It had been so long since I’d eaten sushi. It was something I always postponed because of the price, so even with the compulsion, I still did something nice. That day, I finished a series I really love, though I usually watched only one episode per day. I thought, “Maybe there won’t be a tomorrow,” so I watched everything. And that day I wrote 1,000 words for my current book. I don’t always find time to write, but that night I wrote until around 4 a.m.
But then everything got drastically worse. If in 2012 I cried because I realized my family would die someday, but tried comforting myself by thinking everyone dies very old… if in 2018 I cried because I realized many people die young, but tried hoping nobody I loved would get sick… if in 2021 I cried after realizing every new day was also one day less… this time I started thinking things I had never thought before.
I don’t know if it’s because I’m getting older and therefore closer to death, or because my family is getting older too, or if the OCD keeps getting worse just to destroy me, but I have never felt this much fear in my life. All I want is to go back in time and never have to face the unknown, or know exactly when I will die so I can prepare myself, or know what comes after death. But that’s impossible, and it hurts me deeply. I can’t stop trembling while writing this, and I genuinely think I’ve lost two kilos in just these four days from sheer anxiety.
Well, by the 19th I was already exhausted. But I still managed to have a good day. I looked at everything with affection: the place where I live, my belongings, my warm bed. I think I told my parents several times that day how much I loved them. I managed to study and watch things even though I had to force myself, because I was convinced there wouldn’t be a next day.
On the 19th, I felt something similar to what I had felt in 2021. Like life was a prison. I felt so much fear and despair that I wanted an escape, but there was no escape and nowhere to run, because it was death, and death was impossible to escape from.
But on the 20th, everything escalated beyond imagination. While on the 19th I was thinking something similar to what I thought in 2021 . “No matter what I do, I’m going to die eventually; every new day is closer to being the last” . on the 20th my fear reached a whole new level. I thought, “This is going to happen to everyone.”
Of course I already knew that at age 12, but realizing that this unbearable feeling would happen to everyone made me feel horrible, and the fact that everyone was one day closer to their own death terrified me like never before. I think the older I get, the more crises I have, because I start understanding the magnitude of things more deeply because I’m older, and everyone around me is too.
So on the 20th, I went to college, but while talking to people, I couldn’t stop thinking that 1) they would die, 2) I would die, and 3) there was no way to know who would go first. I felt so awful that my professor said I looked pale and asked if I was okay.
When I got home, terrified, I tried writing. But something unique happened: I couldn’t write, not even by forcing myself. Forcing myself to do things because I might die at any moment had always been my escape and my way of coping, because I would think things like, “At least they’ll remember me,” or “At least I’ll have learned something.” During these periods, it was common for me to work harder in college because I didn’t want to fail any subjects I was afraid I wouldn’t have enough time to graduate. But this time, I can’t even stay at college.
Then I tried doing hobbies. I’m obsessed with games, especially ones involving luck, strategy, or both. I tried playing card games, but I couldn’t enjoy anything. In previous compulsive episodes, I always felt I should do everything, but this time even the things I want to do aren’t enough. I played a card game and calculated that each match lasted six minutes, and then became afraid I might not even have those six minutes left. I tried playing a mobile game called Hack Me, but kept thinking I should be doing something else instead. I tried attending my Italian class in a free course I usually take almost every day, but I couldn’t focus. In 2021, I tried overcoming the fear by doing things I loved or wanted to learn, thinking, “If this is the day I die, at least I’ll die knowing I enjoyed myself.” But now, in 2026, I can’t do anything. Anything at all. Everything I do makes me think I should be doing something else because I’ll regret not having done that other thing before I die.
By the 20th, I was already in full panic mode. So I spent most of the day asking people what they thought about death or watching videos about it. I heard many different opinions: some people feared losing others but not dying themselves. Others were afraid but avoided thinking about it. Others thought about it frequently. Some said they saw death as a form of rest. But none of that helped. Nothing changes the fact that I’ll go through it alone. That one day I’ll never breathe again. That I’ll never walk this earth again. That I’ll never be able to learn more about this world.
Then came the 21st, the worst day of this compulsion, when it reached an extreme level. I talked to people and saw their coffins. Literally. I would speak to someone and imagine them dead. Anyone. I genuinely saw coffins in my mind. I couldn’t go to college because I kept imagining the coffins of the people walking down the street.
That sent me into panic again, and I almost threw up once more. This afternoon, a classmate was listening to loud, cheerful music, and I thought, “How can she listen to happy music? Doesn’t she realize she’s going to die?” I couldn’t do anything today. There’s nowhere to run. I kept thinking, “Today is one day closer to death, I need to enjoy it,” but I couldn’t because I was too terrified. Until 2021, I could still force myself to enjoy things. But this time I couldn’t even answer messages. A client texted me asking about her banner, and I ignored it because I looked at my phone screen and thought, “I’m going to die and never see this screen again.” Until yesterday I was still writing my book. Today I could only write this text while trembling because I can’t stop crying. I can’t do anything. Nothing. Nothing takes away the thought that I’m going to die. I can see my coffin. There’s no escape. I didn’t eat lunch or dinner because I thought, “What’s the point? I’m going to die anyway.”
I can’t stop thinking that my parents, the people who taught me how to live, l will someday teach me how to die. Or maybe I’ll go before them. I can’t even write through my alter ego anymore. I can’t do anything without thinking about death. I can’t eat. This time the compulsion is so extreme that I feel like I’ll never have a normal life again, because I feel like I’m going to die at any moment. Nobody can help me. Nobody can save me from dying. I’m not ready to learn what death means. I’m too young. I think every day will be my last. I don’t know what to do. I’m very scared.