The Death Ship Had a New Captain.
Vampires, a life well lived, and crying into movie popcorn.
Core to who I am as a person, fear is an uncomfortable driving force in my life. Omnipresent, always whispering into my ear that the worst is yet to come, constantly reminding me that everyone I have ever loved, and will ever love, will leave me, whether by death or by choice, unless I leave them first. What I fear most is love unexpressed and life left unlived.
My relationships are the most important thing to me. I love deeply, welcome intimacy, and do my best to foster a community around me that functions as a safe harbor from any storm life might bring. It is no surprise, then, that I’m afraid of losing those that I love. In a perfect world I’d live forever: examining the world around me, living everywhere, and watching things change and grow. I don’t want the ride to be over for me or the people I care for.
There’s an unexpected byproduct of this desire to live forever: I have an above-average interest in vampires. The idea of living forever is so lush. “If We Were Vampires” by Jason Isbell (or the cover by Noah Kahan) makes me cry every single time. What We Do In The Shadows (a show I frequently boast as a favorite) hits me in all the right spots. Twilight was incredibly appealing to me in college and is still something I enjoy wholeheartedly in a kind of “how did this get made” sort of way. Watching the world pass you by and living a million lifetimes is beautiful and poetic. I appreciate the fantasy of it.
Maybe it’s my desire to live forever that drives me to catalog my memories. I invest time in writing things down and occasionally publishing those things. Because of this writing practice, I am in tune with how I feel and generally more aware that I am living through the good moments when I am in them.
A few years back a therapist offered me a solution to my problem of fear that has made it less of a phantom and more of a welcomed guest. She reminded me that often fear has a purpose, and if the purpose is accomplished then the fear can ease into the backseat, as opposed to being the driver. The purpose of my fear of death is that I don’t want to miss out on living my life in tandem with the people I love. There are many ways to accomplish this, and I try to prioritize a life well lived every day. As much as it is still present, my fear doesn’t control me as much as it has shaped me.
Sometimes, when interacting with vampire-specific media, I feel like it’s a wink from the universe. While reprocessing some grief over an ended relationship this August, I found myself on a treadmill listening to Olivia Rodrigo’s Vampire for the first time. Before I knew it, I was all tears, both happy and sad, all at once.
These past few weeks have found me traveling more than normal, but I planned my trips to land me home in time for a friend-who-is-more-like family’s birthday. The friend, the incomparable Billi Dallas, planned her birthday party around a showing of Nosferatu with music by three live electronic musicians. Delirious from the plane ride, attention fixed on the screen, I found myself lusting over a life uninterrupted by death. As Count Orlock skulked around, devoid of emotion, I was aware of my own mortality, and of how short life really is. I fixated briefly on how much more of it I crave.
In the post-symphony-of-horror glow, I found myself sharing a cigarette (sorry, Mom) with the birthday girl. Our hands held tight, our faces close, we told each other how much we loved each other. We told each other how glad we were to have made it to the point where we could meet and become each other’s people. We talked about how life is sweeter because we know it’s finite. There are stakes to not being here. Neither Billi nor I are strangers to grief; we know we will not live forever. The moments we do get need to be better because of that knowledge.
My fear of death and dying has driven me to live a better, emotionally aware and more present life. As much as I feel sad for 8-year-old Chelsea paralyzed by the inevitable end of everything, I do know she’d be proud of the person I am today and what I did with her pain and her fear. Now I hold death and the joy I find in living well in my hands as companions. One doesn’t exist for me without the other.
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