only a lifetime

another new year, another crisis.

lifetime. a word i greatly fear. not the idea of longevity but rather the concept of time.

will my friendships last a lifetime? or will those who i regard as my closest friends slip away with distance? will life get in the way? what will our last words be? how will our last interaction be? what if we find someone better? what if our separate environments render us two completely different people in years' time?

will my blog last a lifetime? what will be my last post? how many years left until i neglect it and let it wither into a memory of the past? what if i run out of ideas? in a decades' time, will i find it embarrassing for my peers to read? what if i never give it up? if i hold it close until the deathbed, how hard would it be to say goodbye? if i write until my last day, maybe i can produce something that outlives me. but what's the good in that if i won't be there to witness it?

what about the internet? will everything now be available for a lifetime? my comfort videos i watch now, will they be my comfort videos for the rest of my life? how will i feel when i become older than those creating the content i consume? how will i feel when i become too old for popular culture? how will i feel reading blog posts i wrote as a teen when i'm in my fifties?

old age. i'm afraid of being old. not the age, but the imminent fear that death is creeping up on me. that soon, i'll no longer exist. and how would that be? eighty years of experiences banked up, will the moments i exist in now still recur as memories when i'm older? the music i currently listen to, will it all be forgotten? my hobbies, will i be seen as too old for them? the important moments, will i still remember events of the past, seventy years ago? will i regret wasting my youth on meaningless video games? will i long for more time? will i beg at death's door only for my cries to be ignored?

every so often, these thoughts creep up and paralyze me. what happens when we no longer exists? what happens when all my friends start dying? maybe i shouldn't think of that now. but our time here is short. oh, so short. and it's really fucking scary. even writing this post, my stomach is sinking, my feet are growing numb, my hands are turning ice cold. writing out my thoughts, i'm making an effort to no longer go on death anxiety spirals, and rather focus on making my time worthwhile.

like finneas put it

"don't waste the time you have waiting for time to pass,

it's only a lifetime,

that's not long enough"

when the time comes, we'll reminisce on the past. it's unavoidable. and i just hope that one day, when i order my last passionfruit green tea, and you, your strawberry milk tea with boba, we'll have our last conversation with a nostalgic, wistful smile.