Not today

Every now and then, for reasons I still don't fully understand, my body reminds me that one day I won't be here.

It's never a slow thought.

It arrives all at once.

A sudden rush through my chest. My heart races. My body floods with panic. For a few seconds, it feels as though every cell wakes up at the same time.

Then, just as quickly as it arrived, it disappears.

I tell myself the same thing every time.

Not today.

And slowly, everything settles again.

I've lived with these moments for most of my life.

I can trace them back to a cinema when I was a teenager.

My boyfriend and I had gone to watch a film. I don't even remember what it was called now, only that it opened with twenty minutes of relentless violence. The screen was filled with people dying. The sound was deafening. Blood, chaos, fear.

Just before the film had started, there'd been an advert with a line I've never forgotten.

The scariest place can be your own mind.

I don't know whether it was the advert.

The film.

Or simply something that happened to unlock a thought I'd never had before.

But somewhere in the middle of all that noise, a sentence appeared in my head.

One day I'll be dead.

It wasn't philosophical.

It wasn't reflective.

It was immediate.

Terrifying.

Absolute.

For the first time, I wasn't thinking about death as something that happened to other people.

I was thinking about my own.

That thought never completely left.

Over the years, I've lost people I loved.

Friends.

Family.

People whose absence still leaves quiet spaces in my life.

Grief, strange as it sounds, makes sense to me.

It hurts.

It changes you.

But it belongs to the people left behind.

What has always frightened me far more is the thought that one day I simply won't exist.

That there will come a morning that I won't wake up to.

A conversation I won't hear.

A cup of tea I won't drink.

A laugh from my daughters that won't reach my ears.

Even writing those words makes something tighten inside me.

For years I thought I was afraid of death.

Now I'm not so sure.

Because I've noticed something.

The panic rarely arrives when life feels full.

It doesn't visit me when I'm sitting in the hammock with one of the dogs climbing in beside me.

It doesn't arrive while I'm watching my daughters laughing in the garden.

Or walking through the woods.

Or drinking tea on a quiet morning.

It comes when life feels like it's waiting.

When I feel stuck.

When I feel I'm not quite where I hoped I'd be.

When I'm standing on the edge of something I haven't yet built.

It's as though my mind quietly whispers,

What if you run out of time?

That question changes everything.

Because perhaps my fear has never really been death.

Perhaps it's leaving life with something still left to say.

I don't mean achievements.

Or money.

Or success.

I mean something much quieter.

Did I notice enough?

Did I love well enough?

Did I spend enough afternoons outside?

Did I help people?

Did I tell my children often enough that they were loved?

Did I become more myself?

Those questions feel much closer to the truth than the fear itself.

The strange thing is that when the panic arrives, I become intensely aware of being alive.

It's almost impossible to explain.

My body floods with adrenaline.

Every heartbeat becomes noticeable.

Every breath feels precious.

For a few seconds, I'm more present inside my own body than at almost any other time.

It's an odd contradiction.

The thought of losing life makes me feel more connected to having it.

Maybe that's why I've slowly found myself changing the way I live.

Not dramatically.

Quietly.

I spend more time outside.

I sit in the hammock.

I watch storms roll across the hills.

I drink tea without rushing it.

I laugh when the dogs decide they belong wherever I'm sitting.

I wear clothes that feel comfortable instead of impressive.

I protect my health a little more carefully than I once did.

Not because I'm trying to outrun death.

I know that's impossible.

Because I'm trying to become fully awake to life while it's here.

I've spent years wondering whether these moments of panic were something I needed to defeat.

Now I wonder if they've been trying to teach me something instead.

Not that life is fragile.

I've always known that.

Perhaps they've been reminding me that life is happening now.

Not in five years.

Not when everything finally comes together.

Not after the next milestone.

Now.

I still don't know whether the fear will ever completely leave me.

Perhaps it isn't supposed to.

Perhaps it's simply the price we pay for loving life enough to want more of it.

I don't want to spend my years rehearsing the day they'll end.

I'd rather spend them noticing the ones that are here.

The tea.

The hammock.

The rain arriving a day later than expected.

The sound of my daughters talking to each other when they think I'm not listening.

The ordinary Tuesdays that never seem important until they're memories.

One day my life will end.

But today isn't that day.

Today, I'm still here.

And today, that feels like enough.