the motorway

This is one of those writing-as-outlet type posts, so if you dont want to read my ramblings.. well what the hell are you doing here anyway? Currently in my room with the lamp on, listening to Tonspuren by Move D. It's the mood I'm in.

For the last couple of weeks, I haven't been well. I haven't mentioned this to anybody, in some ways out of stupidity, in others out of denial. I have been having chest pains and heartburn - sounds all very innocent, but heartburn that lasts two weeks? At times I could feel my heart beating very hard in my chest and struggled to breathe at other times. I dismissed all this at first, blaming a particularly rough patch in the constant battle that is eating well. A few days passed and it got worse, though sometimes I was ok. Usually late at night when lying on the couch, I'd feel my worst - struggling to breathe, feeling pressure on my chest.

Now when you're twenty, you dismiss this kinda deal and move on - nothing stays around for very long and if you're like me, you just get over stuff. I'm now 34 however, and not exactly fit. As the first week dragged on, the idea that I was about to have a heart attack crossed my mind more than once. I even tried to self-diagnose on webmd.com - going by the symptoms, I could have had any number of things. I kept telling myself I should go see a doctor. I have even heard that if you go in complaining of chest pains, you dont even have to wait, they will see you straight away. By the end of the first week, I had started to eat very healthy - sushi, salads, veggies, I even stopped drinking coffee (well for like two days). In the back of my mind I kept thinking see a doctor - it's probably some cancer that if they catch early I'll be fine but because I have put off seeing a doctor I'm probably fucked - it's probably too late.

Obviously when you start to think more and more about this kind of thing, your mind puts together various scenarios - what hospital would I end up in? Who would come visit? I guess I wont ever live in Japan now..

This is all very over the top and sensationalist and in some ways stupid and ridiculous you say - I agree. After approximately two weeks, the problems disappeared just like that and life resumed as normal. After speaking with my parents and discovering that I was born with something called reflux and finding out that most of my family still suffer from it, I am assuming that is what I was experiencing. If it comes back, I will go and see a doctor immediately and confirm this, but for now, I'm back to fit and healthy for the foreseeable future.

What all these thoughts of early death did make me realise is this: no matter how I constructed the end in my head, I honestly never at any point really cared about dying. That's not to say I have lost the will to live or anything even remotely as dramatic as that sounds, but I imagine the most people, given a short life expectancy, try to make the absolute most of every day they have left. They try to accomplish things, achieve goals, etc. For me, I couldn't really think of anything that I wanted to do. At the time, I didn't consider the end of my life to be a tragedy in any way. Life is like that - one day you are here, the next you have cancer, then 6 months later, you're gone and everyone who knew you moves on. Thats how it is.

I imagine that when parents face the prospect of death, the fact that they will no longer see their children stings. I imagine likewise when a child loses a parent. Loved ones, work colleagues, lifes work, goals, achievements - people usually mourn that all ending. At the time, when I seriously was considering that I may be about to die, I honesty didn't really care all that much.

So that got me thinking - is my life really so mundane, that I dont really care if I'm alive or not? Again - dont get me wrong, this is not about artificially ending anyone's life, nor is this me sooking - I'm just trying to work out why I have nothing that I would really miss. Friends and family sure - but it's like I all too easily accepted my fate. Post-chest pain episode, once I was feeling healthy again, I felt a lot more upbeat, and started to think that maybe I should miss aspects of my life, were I to die.

I made a list of things, ordered by priority in a notebook. Three things that stand in the way of me being a pretty bloody happy guy. I made sub points, like what I need to do to achieve each point. I wrote specifics, with dates. I stopped short of a gantt chart. Number 1 has a milestone on Oct 20, and an end date of Nov 20. Putting that down on paper already makes me feel great. Number 2 relates to finding a real job. I have a 90% complete CV, and will start getting my folio together this week. That has a readiness date of Nov 1. Number 3 is ongoing, and will have to wait until Dec or Jan. I just added a Number 4. I called it Meeting People Is Easy. I really do feel like I need to meet people. Not quite sure how.

So this is me committing this stuff really only for myself, but published in a place I can read anywhere anytime. Despite feeling like my life should mean more than it does, I was pretty happy with how calmly I thought I would be able to handle the potential crisis. Being actually put in that situation will be a whole different story, I'm sure.