The Ego Monster

I got into a bit of an argument, about the pride of death.

The idea that dying is, in all ways, as human a function, as primarily human a function, as breathing and making love. That it occurs to everyone, every living thing, no matter how good or evil they are, is a comfort to many people. This awareness provides them with a way to gracefully depart this world, saying goodbye to those who loved them most, to hold firm in the face of the greatest Unknown any of us will ever experience.

Being who I am, and essentially unfulfilled, I vehemently argued that an untimely death, or death I personally found reprehensible, as from cancer, or death from a random falling object, or death from eating a rancid piece of fish--these are deaths not worth dying. The long, drawn-out death knell we all fear, or at least that I personally fear, involves hospital rooms and tubes and withered blotchy faces pleading for surcease.

I hadn't anticipated such an argument would, in many ways, insult anyone else. That someone else might not wish to think of themselves seen in a light of humiliation, as if death was a really terrible dance that they had unleashed at a party, complete with YouTube video evidence.

Dying is made bearable only when we are loved.

That I'm not a "happy" man is not a gigantic surprise. I'm not creatively fulfilled, a rather massive choking knot of displeasure in my throat, is one cause. Another is the natural process of a mental state derived from being raised by a mother with social phobia and violent screams of anguish which not only tormented her but destroyed her son's sense of confidence.

Death, then, is like the worst school cafeteria meal you can possibly imagine. Death is beets and that slab of shitty "pizza" with a burn-victim skin on top. While I waste time battling inner demonics and the slothful pain of writer's block--which real writers proclaim does not exist, and they are undoubtedly correct--I imagine death as the final insult in a life full of similar bullies.

I was told, in very real terms, that any person I loved who was terminal and not-long for this world would never have me around them. Knowing what they know, they'd know I was observing them with disdain, not understanding their process of dying as anything more than a grotesque mistake on their part.

That isn't how I think, but little good it does to say so now. I romanticize death; I believe if I was terminal, I'd best get to a quick, adventurous and ultimately dire quest for a "proud" death. To be slain by a tiger, to fly a spacecraft into the sun, to run across a mined field, these seem much preferable to sitting in a hospital bed surrounded by loved ones and old friends, all of whom are thankful to have this peaceful time, this letting go, a prelude to the gentle embrace of the Void.

One of the few real questions left in Chad Carter's life is: Will I allow myself to be loved, even in death? Or will I shun the goodbyes and the pain, and vanish into a chaos finally released from my raging brow; the monsters long hidden, given delicious substance at last?

The Monster, brutal and defiant to the end.

For what it means, I hope my loved ones will be assured that I will protect them in death as I have in life. Whatever else I am, I am not a monster. Or at least, I am not a monster without a heart.