Existential Terror and You
A Guided Meditation on Deterioration
By Quinn McClurg with art by Sana Ikramuddin
Since more than a year ago, I have been hyper-fixated on two words and their similarities: “apoptosis,” from the Greek “falling off,” defined as the intentional death of individual cells as a means of continuing the collective’s growth, and “apotheosis,” from Greek “make god of,” defined as deification and the highest point of achievement or being.
Around the same time, I suffered multiple unique injuries and diagnoses: two concussions, some broken ribs, and two general heart dysfunctions (arrhythmia and a mitral valve prolapse). For months, I constantly feared internal hemorrhage, imminent death, or never returning to baseline health at all.
In the face of constant existential terror, the mind-body duality faded: existential terror wasn’t in the body, but it was the body, was the flesh, was the mind. Although this may sound pessimistic, the same is true for the rest of us: No matter how fast we run, the biological clocks of our bodies will always be running faster, sprinting toward age, entropy, and deterioration.
Knowing this is unpleasant; in order to stay comfortable, we try to interrogate ourselves through research, exercise control over our bodies and minds, or simply forget what we are. But no matter what method one takes, one still is. Well, I was; injured as I was, I was still conscious. As long as I was and was conscious, I gleaned, I was still whole; as long as I was whole, I had no choice but to keep moving forward in whichever ways I could (I didn’t have any other choice). So I started the process of convalescence.
Unknowingly, it seems, I answered the questions of my previous hyperfixation: apoptosis and apotheosis seem so similar because they are the same process: through death, through loss, through intentional and internal action, we become stronger, defiant, continued. Even if we do not grow, we are still continued, still are; sometimes that is all we can be.
So in the words of Saintseneca, keep living off every scrap of yourself, and “Take solace in knowing (as somebody else) / Though time will tear our bodies off / The you that I knew will not be forgot / No the you that I knew will never be lost.”