Is Anyone Else Perpetually Waiting for the Other Shoe to Drop?

I’ve written a letter to my partner in case of my untimely demise. I call it my Death Letter. I wrote it for him so that he always has a piece of me — just in case.

I take moments when I’m drinking my tea to enjoy every single sliver to time I spend with another person, or looking out the kitchen window, because tomorrow that very loved one could die or a nuclear bomb could be dropped on my neighobourhood and then everything would be in ruins, including any remnants of my life.

I’m always considering the fragility of our mortality, but not as a method of self-awareness, rather with a belief that eventually all of my happiness is going to be ripped away from me.

Because life is beautiful, but it is also cruel. And unfair. And can change in an instant.

I look at my husband-to-be, considering how easy our three-year relationship has been, looking into the future of happily blissful marriage, and thinking about how he far exceeded any expectations of the kind of person I felt I was worthy of. Because of this, I feel so unbelievably, incomprehensibly blessed.

But I also look at him and think:

"I have to remember the curves of your jaw, and the shade of blue in your eyes, and every laugh line on your face because tomorrow you could die in a car accident or be diagnosed with cancer and I’d lose you forever. "

I’m terrified of looking back and realizing that I had taken all of those precious moments for granted.

Am I the only one who does this?

I am not worthy.

I’m pretty sure this comes from a place of my anxiety making me feel like I don’t fully deserve everything I have, and that in order for my happiness to make sense, it has to be balanced out by pain or punishment.

Good times must be paid for with sacrifice. That’s how my brain processes the world. And the same goes for the reverse: horrible people will get their comeuppance and society will be redeemed with justice, because karma must balance out the debt or imbalance of our actions upon the world.

It’s the only way I can make sense of the world around me. Because I don’t understand how it’s fair that I have gotten so damn lucky in my life, when others, for no fault of their own, come across struggles and obstacles and oppression and pain every single day.

What makes me so special?

Who’s to say I deserve the life I have? Because I don’t think I do.

Whoopdy doo, so I started my own online business and saved up a full down payment so that I could buy my own house at 24. But I was also facilitated into being able to do that because my privileged background sent me to good schools and got me a great education and guided me in finance and financial health and I got half-price tuition for university because my mother was an employee so I graduated with 0 student debt.

Which is unheard of. Which has undeniably given me what can only be considered as an unfair advantage in life.

Holding my breath, mentally preparing myself to lose everything.

Tomorrow I could lose everything and everyone I’ve ever known.

It’s depressing, I know, but my mind has been like this for longer than I can remember. It’s been acting up more recently as my upcoming wedding approaches.

The plus side is that it reminds me to be ever-present in enjoying the moment, when my mind tends to be a forward-thinking, 10-year-strategic-planning sort of machine. If it weren’t for my constant fear that I was going to lose the good standing in front of me, it would likely be far too easy to underappreciate every single good thing in my life.

The negative is that I live and exist with this perpetually gnawing feeling that my blissful timer is running out, and soon the reality of life is going to jump out from behind a corner and get me for being so happy. I feel like the grim reaper is hovering over my entire life, cackling to himself manically — because he knows what’s to come, and he relishes in the fact that I won’t see it coming.

I’ve seen some of the darker sides of life.

I was molested as a child, and was ridiculed by my peers when I opened up to “supposed friends” about my repressed memory resurfacing. That memory is still hard to talk about, because it is forever branded with a sense of embarrassment, shame and a “cry for attention”.

I trusted a man whom I loved deeply, but he was only out for the conquest of me and tried to rape me to take my virginity as his prize. He also taught me that I wasn’t good enough. That without him I would be miserable. That if we weren’t together, neither of us would ever find happiness again.

Obviously, that was total bull, because I would find my soulmate 3 years after leaving that deadbeat ex.

But although I left him, the anxiety, PTSD and emotional trauma he inflicted on me with his attempted rape did not leave me.

I never expected to be in that situation — I never thought I would be dumb enough to date an attempted rapist who was only out for himself. I can’t believe I was so stupid to not have seen the monster that was within him for the year and a half of our relationship.

I should have been smarter. I should have seen the signs. Although I understand that his actions were not my responsibility to field or manage, I still feel like thinking that we were ever as happy as I’d made us out to be in my head was pure stupidity, and for that error in judgement, I deserved to have reality smack me straight in the face and beat me down as punishment.

Because if I had been more vigilant, and taken off my ridiculous rose-coloured glasses, I could have gotten myself out and saved the innocent 19-year-old me who I was designated to protect.

But I failed her.

And because of that, I failed me.

And maybe I deserve to be punished for it.