“I don’t want to die.” | 7 Life Lessons From the Abyss
“Hello!? Are you okay?!” she asked, as I lay in a puddle of my own sweat.
At least I thought it was my sweat.
Bewildered I asked, “What happened?!”
“I don’t know! Do you want me to call an ambulance?”
“Sure,” I said resignedly.
“Can you move?”
I lifted my arms an inch before they slammed back down on the table, “Yes, but I have no energy.” The thought of what this could all mean started to frighten me, “I don’t want to die.”
She didn’t hear me because of the commotion in the cafe and because there was a bit of a language barrier since I live here in Vietnam.
The medics emerged with a stretcher. They checked my blood pressure, glucose, heart rate — all seemed normal, which worried me even more.
I then got lifted out of there like Maximus at the end of Gladiator.
Fast Forward
I’m sitting across from the neurologist. At this point I had spent a few days in bed with a numb tongue and an aching back pondering the worst case scenarios… epilepsy, cancer, heart disease, Parkinson’s? I didn’t understand how someone so young and healthy can go through such an ordeal unless there was a deep underlying medical issue.
The neurologist asked me to recall the events that led to the seizure…
“It was a typical day. I had just finished my coffee and cocaine. Kidding, coffee and cake. As I was getting ready to leave I felt my heart flutter. This has been happening on and off for the past several months. I decided to do a quick google search. The prognosis varied from nothing to imminent death. I’m an optimist so I told myself it’s probably nothing, but then I started to feel dizzy then nauseous. I told myself, “Don’t throw up.”, “Don’t throw up”. I leaned back in my seat to take a deep breath. I saw flashes of lights and images and then every thing went black. I awoke in a puddle of sweat.”
He recommended an E.E.G. (tests epilepsy).
I took the test and sat back down with the doctor. He said the results came back… normal. THANK GOD.
He asked me if I’ve ever lost consciousness before?
3 times.
Once when I was robbed and knocked unconscious with a pipe {story for another time, kids}.
And twice before that while giving blood.
He said that it was likely syncope, which is a fancy term for fainting.
He explained to me that if one is out for too long the lack of oxygen to the brain will cause a seizure, which was the difference between this time and the other times I fainted.
I wanted to kiss the doctor because it was the first time in days where I didn’t think I was dying.
I walked out of that hospital with a post-sex afterglow.
With any major life event, I think it could be helpful to reflect upon the lessons learned so that the event would not have passed in vain. These were costly lessons for me (no health insurance), but I give them to you free of cost and without the associated back pain…
Lessons
Prepare to die. One of my regrets while lying motionless on the stretcher was that I still had so much more I wanted to accomplish. At this point in my life I feel like I’m in debt. I’m in debt to my friends, family, and society. I want to pay back that debt with interest before I die. “For whom much is given much is required.” I also want to plan out and finance my own funeral so that it is one less thing my family has to worry about. And if finances permit, I’d like to be cryopreserved so that my last words can be something badass like, “I’ll be back!”
Non-Conscious Being. The loss of consciousness is an interesting concept to ponder. Isn’t it our “consciousness” that makes us human? So what does it mean to lose it? I’m not dead, but I’m also not conscious. Existence is funky. I ponder if losing consciousness is similar to death? Flashes of light and images. Everything goes black. Time no longer exists. I re-awake without knowing whether seconds or hours passed. In that brief interval “I” no longer existed. My experience was similar to a guy who was actually pronounced dead: “Asked about what he felt the moment he died, the Reddit interviewee revealed that it was like as if someone had flipped the on/off switch… everything around him went to black.” Obviously I wasn’t dead, but it doesn’t seem farfetched for my experience to be similar to it. The abyss wasn’t painful, but with that said, my first impulse upon reawakening was to say, “I don’t want to die.”
Hey God, it’s me! I am an agnostic who would like to think there’s a god, especially during low moments. I find the lower we go the higher we look for strength and support. As I went into the MRI machine I was asking god for my brain to be okay and I promised I’ll try harder to not to take his creations for-granted.
Existence feels solid. Sometimes I ponder why the heck more bad things don’t happen to me. Why don’t I have a serious illness? Get hit by a car and die? Why doesn’t a meteor crash down and kill us all? Why do I feel safe in such a volatile world? It’s because relative to my timescale these things are rare. The chances of us dying this second is unlikely, but the chances of us dying this century is likely, which relative to the universe’s timescale is still but a second. Look at the stars. We are merely a flicker of dust on a massive pinball machine.
Thoughts are more powerful than you thought. I read that some people are able to make themselves faint. I feel like now that I’ve experienced it so many times I can probably do so too {call me Hollywood} by tunneling my thoughts on a stressor, which makes me ponder if we have the power to lose consciousness then maybe we have the power to maximize it?
Life is a game. After returning from the abyss I feel reinforced in my belief that life is like a game where eventually we’ll be hit with GAME OVER. The difference is we don’t get an instruction manual despite what the major religions tell us. We must either come up with our own or attach to a preexisting one {or mixture of the two}. We can also change the game we are playing overtime if it becomes too boring or difficult. In any game though the more you can push through the difficult levels the greater the glory and satisfaction. It’s also in seeing life as a game that we shouldn’t take ourselves too seriously.
Embrace the black. Upon returning from the abyss I’ve had a greater appreciation for the beauty and richness of life. We are all so inundated with notifications, advertisements, emergencies that corrode the enjoyment of simple pleasures. Meditation seems the closest thing to nothing. Imagine meditating for a full day in a dark room. The next day you step outside you’ll have a greater appreciation for the light. When we start to feel like we’re losing appreciation for simple pleasures then consider going into a metaphorical or actual hole.
Thanks for reading! I hope you may also find these lessons helpful during your darkest moments.
LAST WEEK’S ARTICLE: How to Be Outrageously Consistent | 7 Tips to Be Consistently Consistent, exceptions for medical issues ;)
