It feels like I am the only one who has this much trouble with being, just being… for now, and eventually non-being. I have not met anyone with this recurring need to process the tragedy of being alive as a temporary human… So I’m always the crazy one, the weird one, the dramatic one who already has a problem with life before anything actually goes wrong.

And if I am not the only one, then why don’t we talk about the bigger picture of life more often and more openly? To me, it feels like this world only allows space for calm and collected answers, mainly religious ones or avoidant ones like “it does not matter, it is not relevant, …”.

I wish it would be more of an option to allow for some time and space to dive into the messy sadness and the anxious questions together. To look life in the eye for what it is and what it isn’t. To appreciate the beauty and validate the pain all at once. Even if it is just for those who feel like lost souls in the universe sometimes, desperately reaching for something to hold on to. Moments of existential awe and despair, totally optional, but also totally acceptable, not a flaw nor a waste of time.

I wish someone would have opened up to me about both the beauty and the tragedy of being a human when I was just a kid. I would have liked to grow up, understanding with all my being that nothing is forever and we don’t actually have anything, we just experience and we witness until we don’t anymore. Contrary to what you might think, it would have been very soothing to me if I could have seen others process the human reality and work through the inherent grief of life.

My own searching and sharing

I am allowing myself time and space now, but I wonder who I would be if I would have been allowed and supported to see and feel everything from the start. Today, it still feels like I am supposed to hide any existential confusion and pretend that life is just the most normal and acceptable concept ever. But I can no longer pretend and I will not hide anymore.

Maybe someday, someone will let in the pain and the fear and (slightly) panic with me and it will be beautiful. Maybe we let tears flow and take a moment to be heartbroken together. Maybe we allow ourselves to feel and experience the immensity as well as the ephemerality (or fleetingness). We hold each other along with the everythingness and the nothingness of our core. We turn our experience into art and into words, but most of all into living and loving. We connect with another being and say: we’ve got this, we can be alive, we can be here – wherever ‘here’ actually is – even if it is just for now, we can smile, we can cry, we can breathe and we are not alone.