Yes and no. I can rarely bring myself to care about anything at all, let alone notice very much that goes on around me (especially if it's the outside world), but the constant yearning for a swift, inescapable fate with terminal implications is always there on some level. Hospice patients, critically wounded individuals as a result of some disaster or another, and the myriad unforeseen deaths that happen everyday. These being just a few of the greatest misfortunes most people could imagine befalling them, and here I am thirsting for what they fear the most. (*sigh*) But I'm the same way, in the end. I mean, say I could swap places with a hospice patient, I guarantee you I'd be pissing my drawers and shitting myself with fear. Pathetic, but I know it's true. The pitiful languishing of just another base ego who's time is almost up, begging to persist just one moment longer despite the prior existence being completely intolerable. Like a prisoner in the Tower of London pleading for his life, just so he can be tortured some more until the day he dies naturally, having suffered tremendously more in the process. Completely illogical, but that's the DNA molecule for you.
Reminds me of a brief anecdote involving the pitiable thing who passes as my father. A number of years ago, after my mom went to go see a local psychic out of curiosity, she got a "reading" from her that apparently my father was going to die soon (don't ask how or why, that's "not how it works"). My mom then passingly relayed this to him as a sort of joke, not really taking it very seriously. Anyway, I remember how I was sitting at the kitchen table eating a snack a number of days later while my father was standing at the sink nearby looking out the window until suddenly he just began balling his eyes out. I mean he was downright distraught. He then started blubbering about how deathly afraid he was for his life all because of what my mother had said. In passing. From a psychic. Who's place of business was wedged between a dirty book store & a fucking gas station. The only time my father ever cried or gave a shit about anything and it was about himself. And for the lamest, most cowardly reason imaginable. Pissing his pants in front of his own son over the mere idea that he just, might, maybe.......die. I've never seen anything more commiserable in my entire life, the whole display was just that sickening. In that moment, I was literally Sylvester the cat's son incarnate, except I don't think saying the titular "Oh father" line would've quite covered what I was seeing. I swear, if my father could somehow keep breathing despite having the skin flayed from his bones every day for 70 years, he would. It sounds insane, but life (no matter how hellish the circumstances) is all that matters to him. Not only that, but my father also has zero dignity or remorse and would gladly let a school bus full of children burn alive if it meant he could live just one moment longer. A part of me just can't fucking wait until he's on his deathbed. What a show that'll be. How the worm will wriggle and weep for itself. Despite never giving even a moment's thought to anyone else, least of all his own family. Fucking bastard, deserves whatever turmoil he goes through. Especially, after having dished out so much to the rest of us over the years.
Will son be like father in the face of death, though? I just don't know. It's not like he gave me a great impression of how to deal with death. And that's putting it lightly. Odds are, all my hangups about it probably come back to him in the end (thanks again, daddy) Beneath all the outward thrashing though, assuming there is any, I have to imagine there would be an unmistakable relief. Purely in the knowledge that it's all over now, I won't have to limp along anymore. I won't have to cry alone in my room anymore, clawing at my head screaming internally for the pain to stop. I won't have to be anymore. Sort of like how I'd imagine Frodo felt after he destroyed the One Ring which then followed with him standing there saying with profound relief that, "It's over. It's done." Or maybe I'll be just like dear old dad. Either way, it's all so useless. If only I could have hitched a ride with Frodo & Gandalf to the Grey Havens. My luck I'd come sprinting on to screen just as they're setting sail with me leaping off the edge of the pier just managing to grab the end of the of the boat, precariously dangling off as it heads forward into the sunset. Which would, hopefully, then follow with me being erased from existence somehow. Either that or falling into the water and being eaten by a sea monster. Not sure where all that came from, but whatever. I forgot what I was talking about.
