Death,
I am scared of you. I am scared of you like I am scared of nothing else; I fear you to my very core. Everything I do -- everything we do -- is out of fear of you. I fear the day you take the ones I love away. When I wake up, I fear that one day I won't. I fear, every single day, I fear that this is the last one I get.
Death, you might have lost your sting, but, my God, can you still swing. You hit me like a train sometimes. When I'm with my friends, when I'm in class, when I'm showering, brushing my teeth, trying to catch my breath, you pop up like a jump scare in a Hollywood horror film. I can feel your cool hands wrap around my shaking wrists; I can feel the pull. You take me from the one reality I get only to join you in yours. And what a dark reality it is. So draining. So frequent.
It's a hopeless battle for you. I know that you lose. One day, you will be beaten. You lose this war, but you fight these battles with an audacious tenacity unlike anything I have ever seen before. You throw punch after punch like you never tire. You swing and hit and you hardly ever miss. Don't your knuckles ache? Do you feel the pain, the despair, the fear -- do you feel them in your bones as they make contact against fleshy human skin? The oh so tender, oh so aching hearts you break, do you feel that? Do you cry, too?
I know personifying you is a way to make my fear more tolerable. I know making this letter open is nothing short of therapeutic. I know I'm not as alone as let myself think I am. We all fear you. To some capacity, we do. I don't want to, but I do. Maybe it's evolutionary, maybe it's my awareness of how sinful I really am, maybe it's a sort of fear of missing out, but whatever the cause may be, I fear you. I fear you and I pity you and I don't know what to do with that. There is a light that the darkness, that your darkness cannot overcome. I know that. I know.
I know how this ends.
I know I don't get a way around this. No one does. We all die. It is a reality I try to accept every time I get down on my knees to pray. It is a reality I try to accept every time I look into my sisters' eyes, every time I close my own. I know I get one shot at this--one shot, while you've been shooting for centuries. Death, my dear Death, my cold, old, lonely Death, do you envy us? Do you ever wish to die yourself because you know what comes next? To see what we get to see?
Or do you pity us? Pity the pain you cannot feel with the heart you do not have? Do you pity our misery? You've seen kings torn from thrones and beggars left, forgotten. You've taken every kind of person. You will take every single person. Do you pity us?
Because I don't.
I am scared of you, but I am in love with something greater. I trust in something stronger. I would die for something grander. I would face you, with knees shaking and voice breaking, in all your pain and in all your sorrow, I would face you and I would let you, dear Death, do what must be done. Not because I want you to, but because I need you to. I need you to get home. We all do.
Death, I fear you. I hope that when I face you--because one day, I will face you--I no longer do.
Yours Truly
