There comes a time when you come face-to-face with your own mortality.

The time when you look at yourself in the mirror and you see an aging woman or a man—a total contradiction to how you feel inside.

Like in that song, “Wake me up when it’s all over, when I’m wiser and I’m older,” have I been sleeping all this time? When did this happen?

Just yesterday I was that 16 year old that had visions of her future and felt invincible, immortal. Everything was still ahead, limitless. And now, I come to the realization that I have most likely lived longer than I have left to live.

So, the fear creeps in. Liquid desperation that I haven’t found something and I’m running out of time.

This past spring there were a few times when I was running outside with my dog and felt that intense joy of just being alive—the way I felt as a child. So, I can still feel that way but the big difference is that back then I had no fear of the future, no fear of any end.

The end may be just a change of form, shifting of energies, but the bottom line is all that I know now, all that I love and all that I could experience and love for an indefinite period of time all of a sudden… is finite.

And I feel it. Every cell of my body feels its own timeline, its own imperfection and impermanence. And worse, it feels the impermanence of my loved ones.

I see the horizon at the end of my journey. I still don’t know what’s beyond it.

We all face our mortality in different ways. And I have tried quite a few of them. But I no longer want to run somewhere to feel young, do something that makes me drown my fears. All I want is to know that “I” and everyone I love will go on: all I want to achieve is to know there is no death.

Please tell me there’s no end of time. No end of life. No end of love.

Just the end of my ignorance.

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Editor: Travis May

Photo: Mario/Pixoto