Grappling with Mortality: Part 1

They say the three most sure fire topics to incite argument, ire and anger are religion, sex and politics. If you want to quickly suck the humor out of a person's soul, challenge them to debate you on either one of those subjects. So I figured, why the Hell don't I just dive right into maybe the most dangerous one? I am a very confident person...for the most part. I get on stage and tell jokes to total strangers, hoping to make them laugh. I've played shows in a rock band in front of a few hundred kids, and didn't bat an eye-lash. I write for several sites, exposing every nook and cranny of my psyche...Yet, despite all these self-assured feelings, for the past two or three years I've dealt with panic attacks about death that are always frightening and often times debilitating. They are triggered usually as I lay down to sleep, in that moment just before my mind and body surrender to dreams.

Starting with a wave of what is close to nausea, the dread and panic starts from my toes and washes over me going all the way through my spinal column and up into brain. It's a feeling that is actually kind of hard to describe because it's both biological and metaphysical. As it envelops me, I start to imagine the great Void, beyond this life we have here on Earth, and it scares the daylights out of me.

I'm not exactly sure why it scares me so much, to be completely frank. I consider myself to be a fairly logical person, and I know and accept that all things must pass, even my own life. I can say that I never had these kinds of attacks until I was father. In fact, I lived my life with a certain reckless abandon, completely devoid of thoughts that reached into much more than "eat, sleep, drink, smoke, fornicate." My parents of course would insist this was not how I was raised. For twelve or thirteen years we spent nearly every Sunday in a house of God. I shudder now at the thought of a thirteen year old me, standing in the quad at break time in high school, bible in hand, praying with the other Jesus Kids. Let me be very clear here, I don't blanch at the thought of having religious thoughts, I'm embarrassed because as I've gotten older, I've learned that one's own spirituality is best kept and practiced in the smaller places of our hearts and minds. Wearing a big sign that advertises your spiritual beliefs like some kind of metaphysical billboard just grosses me out.

The point is that I think religion's ultimate purpose is to provide us mortal, sentient human beings with peace of mind in regards to the hereafter. After all, no one's ever come back to tell us what the other side is like, so what option would we have but to develop a sort of defense mechanism against the hopeless despair of knowing we're all going to die? If we're given an "instruction manual" of life, then we feel safe and secure. When you know what's going to happen, you don't wonder or worry, right?

So yes, starting at about age 27 or 28, I started having terrible panic attacks, nearly every single night, worrying about the abyss. I'd suddenly be struck with the thought that one day I would die, and leave behind my wife and my sons, probably never to see them ever again. It filled me with both sadness and anger. Sad that I'd not get to be with them again; angry at the meaninglessness that mortality imparts to life.

I know that I've always had a tough time dealing with the very idea of death (not that it kept me from having a brief but brutal bout with depression in my late teens into my early 20's that led to some dark, dark places). I remember being about eight years old and crying so loudly in my bedroom that my mom came to check in on me. She asked me why I was so upset, and I told her that I was worried about dying. She played her Christian Mother role to a tee and told me that it's totally natural to worry about dying, but that since we all believed in Jesus we'd all meet again in the Kingdom of Heaven, so we have nothing to worry about. I felt the effects of the spiritual narcotic almost instantly, and I was able to comfort myself for a few years with the idea. Everlasting life. It's amazing what that notion can do to a human being. It doesn't quite give you invincibility, but it gives you this piece of mind that nothing really matters here on Earth, because you have the skeleton key to the Pearly Gates. For you see, if you know that you're going to the Good Place once it's all over, you can live life with a totally unique brand of freedom.

Then around age 13 or 14, my parents just stopped going to church. I know they didn't give up their religion, and now, years later I know that they felt like there was a subversive, almost political vibe in the church we attended in our tiny little mountain community, so they figured they'd keep their religion their own way, at home. There's probably a good seven or eight pages worth of material I could glean from those years, analyzing my parents' behavior,but we're talking about my own hangups, not theirs.

This is probably where my first big schism with Conservative values started. Up to this point, I listened to Limbaugh with my parents, and I swallowed every bit of that Kool-Aid that I was handed. Anyone who knows me now would probably laugh at the idea of me being a straight-laced, buttoned up conservative. But I was playing the part my parents gave me. I think I played the part pretty well, too. My friends that knew me at about 18 can attest to me still holding on to some of those values even then, but it was a quick progression into the Commie Pinko I am today. My parents' sudden departure from the church also coincided with me starting to listen to the Beatles, which led me right into the music and cultural ideas of the 1960's. I drank in the music deep, deep down into my soul, identifying most with John Lennon. It wasn't too long before my views were challenged so much that I almost sub-consciously threw off all the Jesus stuff. I didn't really adopt a new spirituality so much as I just left that part of my being naked and exposed.

It never really caught up with me until one night as I sat on my couch, watching TV. I felt sick, and empty, and was really confused. I had to go into the bathroom and just stand there, hovering over the sink. Telling myself to calm down. What was happening to me?