Why do people think that this life is the FIRST life, and that when we die, we go to “hell” (or heaven if you happen to choose to believe the “right” god)?
What if THIS is one of the afterlives- what if we had a previous life, and then “god” put us here, on Earth, to punish us, for at least 1 human lifetime? Not that I believe in gods, but if there was, then this could also exist.
If aging isn’t the ultimate punishment, I don’t know what is. For all you “young” and healthy people, you have no idea what this kind of suffering is. For all the older folks, you know what I’m talking about. Little by little, you lose more and more functioning. You lose a little bit of this and a little bit of that. You cannot do a fraction of the stuff you used to do. You slowly lose your independence and your ability to take care of yourself. And everything starts to hurt. All day, all night.
THEN, after decades of declining, you get to experience the worst of the worst, in the last few years (or months) of your life. Most people on this site have not gotten to this point yet, so you haven’t felt how truly bad it is yet.
For most, we are in a gradual decline, slowing losing bit by bit every year. And then the final wave comes, which is utterly horrific. I’ve watched documentaries filming people in the last 6mo of their life. It’s one thing to slowly decline year after year. It’s another entirely to experience an insanely sharp decline in the last months of your life. You think it’s been bad for years, and you’ve been hanging on by a thread. Oh boy, the last few years/months are nothing like you’ve ever known. It’s horrific.
It’s one thing to KNOW something is terrible. It’s another to SEE it and fully understand what it’s like, and that it will inevitably be you one day. I did not understand until I watched those documentaries following several people over a period of 6mo, and showing people exactly how they decline, month by month, and day by day. Holy f-.
I have suffered a lot in my life- practically all my life, both physically and emotionally- I don’t want to suffer THAT.
Will I be able to off myself before that occurs? I have suffered more than enough in this shitty lifetime. How does one suffer through a long and drawn-out disgustingly painful death like that? And no, for those who don’t understand aging- most old people don’t suddenly drop dead of a heart attack and then it’s peace. If their heart does stop, it’s only after years and years of slow, agonizing decline. And you’ll probably have several heart attacks before the final one.
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Yes, it is one thing to hear about it and another to live it. It’s sort of like seeing a relative you haven’t seen in twenty years, or attending a funeral of someone you haven’t seen in a long time also. You see these people and all you can think is “What happened?” I used to play sports a lot, and in those young days, what I was doing to myself was abuse, but I didn’t care. Nowadays, the exercising I do is preventive maintenance – trying to stay mobile and flexible, and nursing major lower back issues. But, like everyone’s grandmother probably says, getting old isn’t for wimps.
Getting old also isn’t for depressed people. If being mentally crushed wasn’t bad enough…
Civilization was our undoing. Don’t get me wrong, I love my creature comforts, but at times in Homo sapiens history, life spans were what, in the high twenties, mid thirties? Now, being all nice and civilized, we’ve learned how to prolong our suffering. And why? Because our televisions show us commercials where senior citizens are walking on beaches, wearing those silly ass flowing white tunics that are blowing in the breeze, while Mr Happy Senior twirls Mrs Happy Senior around, both of them laughing and “enjoying the benefits of this product and that pill and this knee brace and that back brace”.
Walking on the beach, happy and fulfilled, twirling your soulmate. Hmmm. What a difference from the reality of life, struggling to just survive.
I would love that. To be elderly and healthy. Shit, I would’ve loved to have been 25 and healthy. Then 30, 35… I want to live dammit! I got ripped off somewhere along the way. I want to use my ballroom dancing lessons. I WANT TO GROW OLD WITH MY MAN. I’m tired of being sick and wishing I was dead. Death is coming for us all. I want to have some FUN before it gets here. Is that too much to ask for?
i visit a senior living center monthly. I see no reason for myself to live that way. Well unless they start selling the energizer bunny pacemaker. Then I could row upstream with my honey, hell yeah.
If I hadn’t decided to get that baseline mammogram at 35 I wouldn’t have made it to forty. Did I make a mistake?
About six months ago I had one of those “see your doctor” events but I just kept the matter to myself. As it would turn out, nothing to it really, but was hoping for a natural way out. Nope, just kept my next shrink appointment, saying nothing about it of course. I stopped seeing drs all together several years ago.
i’m sure Hell is Earth, some people are very lucky to have a beautiful life, almost everything can get wrong, some people are blind, they always see positive when there is none, i don’t think that’s such a good thing
ageing everything gets worse, your teeth, your joints, your fingers, blood flow, lungs, and then you can have a stroke or anything that makes you lose a limb, sometimes i think it should be good to leave at the top
say you lived a lot, most of your relatives are gone, you’re no needed by anyone, we should be able to leave this world for fear of it getting worse, yes of course it’s a gamble, maybe nothing bad would have happened or you would have won the lottery but maybe not also
like my friend who had a stroke at 41, he’s now a vegetable unable to kill himself until he dies….. we spoke about that before his stroke and he wanted to die before it happened, well too late, he’s living Hell on Earth now