An Untitled Novel: Introduction

This novel will be written in a first person narrative – from the point of view of a terminally-ill teenage girl with two years to live. This is her diary of accepting her fate and, ultimately, her death. The following is her introduction: 

Death, the great unknown. It’s beyond all that is familiar to us – a verb and a tragedy for which we will always be on the other side of the looking glass. It’s the absence of a tangible body. Of eyes to cry with, and lips to smile with. And, quite possibly – seemingly probably – the absence of a consciousness.

To me, non-existence has always been far scarier than pain or suffering. “I think, therefore I am”. I suffer, therefore I think. Alas, I am. But what happens when I can no longer hurt? When nothing ever has the power to bother me because there simply is no me to be bothered? It’s terrifying, it’s confusing, and it’s maddening. It makes me angry with God – why can’t he materialize that which would validate my beliefs?

I do realize that people don’t have to think about these things. They could just live life for life, and accept the necessary conditions of death in a detached way. Ignorance and bliss work well together anyways. And if life has been kind, they will someday stand in front of a mirror, looking at the grey wisps of hair scattered across their scalps, and reminiscing beautiful, faded memories. Their lives would no longer be sprinkled across the hope that tomorrows bring, but collected in the hangars of their minds. Death, in its eerie, omniscient way, would lie just ahead, being ready to snatch them up in a second. And they, whose young selves were once invincible and whose time was once seemingly eternal, would be ready.

But not everyone can be so blessed. I have to think about these things. Evil exists in this world – it gave me the luxury of knowing dreams and dreaming futures, only to turn around and say, “Too bad. This is not for you.” My life is on a timer. It’s telling me that I have enough time to wrap myself up in nightmares, and not enough time to ever find love, to know happiness, or to uncover self-worth. I’m losing myself before I can ever find myself.