contemplation

As someone who has contemplated suicide, you'd think that I would have a solid idea of what comes next. Maybe you think I've seen into veil. Maybe you assume that I laugh in the face of death. But none of these are true. I don't know what comes next.

But personally, I think death is the end. I think people have created stories to explain the unknown.

I think most people are just gone. But we are left to deal with their loss. And the way we cope is by imagining that they're in a better place. Or maybe, by imagining that they're in a worse place, as a sort of atonement for the wrongdoings they did to you.

However, I do believe in ghosts. But that seems to contradict the idea of no afterlife. So maybe there is some hellish purgatory: no Heaven, no Hell, just lost souls floating aimlessly, slowly being driven insane by their intangible immortality. But in reality, I think that there's no "correct" idea of what happens after death. Based on my experiences, I do not think there is an afterlife. However, I know there are some people who are firmly convinced that there is an afterlife. And so, when I do die, when I finally bite that poisoned apple, I will be open to whatever comes next, be it Heaven, Hell, Purgatory, Elysium, the Fields of Asphodel, or the Fields of Punishment, or Shangri La, or Valhalla.

I think the worlds after death that we come up with are not words of a prophet, but words of a person coping with loss. And, in my opinion, it's a perfectly reasonable way to cope with that loss.