that's life lol 🥹

Thoughts on death, thoughts on life, all via our various expressions of self (on and off TikTok).

Want to read this full essay and get in your feelings? Well, you’ll have to upgrade to paid, my angel 🐣

Read while listening to “Shed That Fear” by Nourished By Time."

I collect TikToks about death because I think death is fascinating.

This is and isn’t a morbid curiosity; however these videos aren’t about acts of death (Murder or true crime, for example.) but about the dying process, about the spaces between life and death, the end of life process, no matter how fast or slow that might be. I don’t do this because I think they’re interesting but I find it absolutely absurd that we all have these lives and one day we won’t have these lives. I understand, intellectually, that this isn’t a special thought or that the act of death or dying is unique to me, but it’s absolutely incredible that we don’t spend all of our time talking about this, that we aren’t always outside, looking at each other and looking at clouds, holding hands in nature, bathing in pools, kissing dogs and each other. Ostensibly, this is our only life. How is living not all that we do?

Yes, jobs and capitalism and the like prevent “this” but it’s one of the greatest tragedies of our times that death is scrubbed out of our lives, that we’re forced to forget in so many ways that all this “ends” (and how easily it ends: such is the desensitisation of the ultimate at the hands of media). It’s trendy to talk about how terrible life is, that one “wants to die,” that “existence is a prison,” and that everything sucks. Things are bad, yes — but we’re alive. I think about this tension a lot. I think about this so much that the new book I’m working on is built around this idea of death normalization and it’s inverse, this sort of quiet consumption that makes not-living unremarkable which in turn makes living unremarkable. That’s a big sad, right?