My anxious disposition means I think about death a lot. But a cluster of people I loved dying in 2023, and most of them unexpectedly and within a few months of each other, was enough to shake my nervous system up pretty significantly. Five funerals is too many. The first was my nan: she was the family matriarch. The oldest person in the family, so there was a level of acceptance among the sadness. But soon after it was her son, and then her granddaughter (my cousin). The latter two were shocks, completely upending my nervous system, one compounding the other. From there, two more followed. Death was all around. It wasn’t just a part of life by that point – it was something to expect soon and often.
At first I seemed fine. Despite concerned friends and partners asking if I was hiding anything, I didn’t think I was. But soon I retreated from fun, becoming very fixated on things like my resting heart rate and body fat percentage. I skipped social events for high-intensity interval training sessions followed by the sauna followed by meditation – not a bad thing, but not a balance, either. I cut out caffeine, including dark chocolate. When I didn’t stick to my new routine, I would have a panic attack, which I’d assume was a heart attack, which would lead to more frequent episodes of panic.
