Everyone Dies In The End
Except writers — we get to live forever
I can’t sleep and there is a knot of nerves in my stomach. A ball of dread I am trying to unpick. Almost forty-six years on this planet have taught me at least that — you need to work out what is bothering you before you can deal with it.
What’s bothering me is I cannot sleep and I cannot sleep because I cannot stop thinking about my approaching birthday and my inevitable death.
Over the decades I’ve approached all my birthdays with excitement and joy, often stretching the fun out over a couple of days, because why not?
What hits me now, what has been hitting hard for a while, is how fast it all goes. How one minute you are in disbelief that your twentieth birthday is almost upon you, that you are about to leave your teens and your childhood behind and then the next minute you are staring thirty in the eye. Goddamn thirty! Time to act grown-up? Time to change the way you dress? I was never sure. I feared and dreaded forty but quite enjoyed it when it hit. After all, it was just a number, right? Just another number, just another year. In truth, I was just happy to still be here.
In a few days I turn forty-six and that puts me closer to fifty than forty and for some reason that just blows my mind. I’m not panicked exactly — it’s not…
