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 racing, every cell waking up at the same time. Then, just as quickly as it came, it disappears.

I tell myself the same thing every time. Not today. And slowly, everything settles again.
I can trace these moments back to a cinema, years ago, as a teenager. My boyfriend and I had gone to watch a film I no longer remember the name of — only that it opened with twenty minutes of relentless violence. Blood, chaos, noise. Just before it started, an advert had run 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 something that had simply been waiting to surface. But somewhere in all that noise, a sentence arrived in my head, fully formed.

 One day I’ll be dead. Not philosophical. Immediate. For the first time, I wasn’t thinking about death as something that happened to other people. I was thinking about mine.

What is it that actually frightens me?

I’ve lost people over the years — friends, family, absences that still leave quiet spaces. Grief, strange as it sounds, makes sense to me. It hurts, it changes you, but it belongs to the people left behind, and there’s a shape to it I can recognise.

What frightens me more is something stranger: the thought that one day I simply won’t exist. A morning 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 me.

For years I assumed this was a fear of death. Lately I’m not so sure — because I’ve noticed when it actually arrives, and when it doesn’t.

It never visits me in the hammock

It never visits me in the hammock, with a dog climbing in beside me. It doesn’t come while I’m watching my daughters laugh in the garden, or walking through the woods, or drinking tea on a slow morning. It comes when life feels like it’s waiting. When I’m stuck. When I’m standing at the edge of something I haven’t built yet, and some quiet part of me asks: what if you run out of time before you do?

Maybe the fear was never really about dying. Maybe it’s about leaving with something still unsaid. Not achievements, or money, or any of the usual scoreboard. Quieter things. Did I notice enough. Did I love well enough. Did I tell my children they were loved, often enough that they never had to wonder.

The Strange part

Here’s the strange part: when the panic does arrive, I become intensely aware of being alive. Every heartbeat noticeable. Every breath, briefly, precious. For a few seconds I’m more present inside my own body than at almost any other time — as though the thought of losing life is what makes me feel most connected to having it.

Maybe that’s why I’ve quietly started living differently. Not dramatically — I still don’t know how to outrun any of this, and I’ve stopped trying. I just spend more time outside. Watch storms roll across the hills instead of my phone. Drink tea without rushing it. Wear the comfortable jumper instead of the impressive one. Not to escape the thought, but to be a little more awake for the life sitting around it.

I used to think these moments were something to defeat. Now I wonder if they’ve simply been reminding me of something I already knew, in a way I could actually feel: that life is happening now, not in five years, not after the next milestone. Now — the tea, the hammock, the rain arriving a day later than forecast, my daughters talking to each other when they think I’m not listening.

I don’t know if the fear will ever fully leave. Maybe it isn’t supposed to. Maybe it’s simply what it costs to love being alive enough to want more of it.
I still don’t know whether I’m afraid of dying, or afraid of not noticing while I’m here.
Which one do you think it would be, for you?