I’ve written about this before, but I have this exaggerated fear of loss. More specifically, my parents golden retriever is 16. She’s doing well for her age, but she’s growing more and more unsteady, slowing down month by month. She probably won’t last the winter. This reality terrifies me.
I’ve spent a lot of time raising her, looking after her throughout her life. A lot of that time I was living at home with her. She was pretty much the only being who consistently looked happy to see me when I got up every day, who wanted to be around me when I came home from work miserable. She used to curl up in a ball and sleep on me when she was a puppy.
And I suppose what I’m afraid of is losing that link back to the past. To a time when I was less hopeless. Of losing one of the few creatures who has some significance in my life. Because I don’t believe I have it in me to form new bonds anymore. I don’t think I’ll ever get a pet of my own.
And this fear extends beyond her, to my parents. They’re both pension-age now. They both have health concerns. They’re going to die at some point, and I’ll lose the only people that genuinely give a shit. The only people who care enough to check up on me or ask about my issues. My only real link to humanity. And my only link back to a time when I was happy, when I was still a person. And all that’ll be left is the misery that I am now.
And this fear grips me. I wake up consumed by it on random mornings. Like I have to do something about it. I have to stop it from happening, somehow.
Which is absurd. In order to do that I’d have to find a way to stop the aging process. That’s like trying to hold back the tide. Even if it were possible, it’s not going to be me, some humanities-degree dropout, who finds a way. It’ll be someone highly motivated and qualified in the sciences. Even if I dedicated all my time and energy to it from this point on, I’d still be so far behind that I’d never come close to catching up with an expert.
Which is to say that I’m effectively powerless. And I know this, rationally. Yet still the fear grips me. Like I see it coming and have to do something to prevent it. To prevent death, one of the few universally recognized inevitabilities.
And the real issue here is that I’m not building anything in this life, to replace the things I’ll inevitably lose. I’m not in a relationship, I don’t have any children, I don’t have any close friends, and I don’t see any prospect of any of that changing. That’s all you can do to cope with the pain of life. You can’t cling to the past, because it’ll inexorably be torn from your grip by the passage of time. All you can do is look to the future, and try to build something meaningful enough to make all the loss worth it. And I’m not building any kind of future worth living in. I don’t feel capable of it. So I’m just left with the loss, and the fear of it.