I saw the world end on TV when I was a kid, and I haven’t been the same ever since. 

I remember that my father would sit me down on our living room couch and tell me to pay close attention to the screen – I was about to learn a lot about the real world. He’d watch a lot of National Geographic, Discovery or History Channel – and I liked being there, watching along, beside him. Those were “grown-up“ channels, and as he used to say –

I’d be learning a lot about the real world. 

This was somewhere before 2012, before the Mayan apocalypse craze. But the perfect time for a quick educational rundown of every possible way the world could end. I watched the Sun go up in flames and engulf the Earth. I watched asteroids hit our planet and throw it off its axis. I saw eternal winter – events of mass extinction. 

I saw total death before anyone I had ever known up until that point ever died. My childhood dog hadn’t died yet. I had yet to know personal tragedy. But on that night, in front of the TV, I got acquainted with it. What followed was a kind of grief for all life, known or unknown; an emptiness expanded inside my abdomen; a bottomless pit absorbing all my memories. A gaping mouth that would feed on everything that would ever live. Oblivion.

I had seen so much and was ready for nothing to come.

Some nights I’d be worrying about the next day. On other unfortunate nights I’d think about the Sun turning into a Red Giant in 5 billion years and what I was going to do about it.

My mind could not make sense of it, although it tried. I’d run through the simulations in my head over and over as they did on TV. Rehearsals. I’d lie awake imagining every tragedy that I could ever experience. The death of everyone I loved, that I would stand to lose, in nuclear fallout or acid rain. It would become part of my night routine – possible catastrophe, cry, sleep.

And in my sleep, still no relief. 

My nightmares would pick up where my tired brain left off.

I reasoned that if I’d mourn the world enough in advance, I could carve out a little piece of time meant for the sole enjoyment of it, too. 

But I never did. I saw, still see, nothing, everywhere.

I still find it very hard to look forward to things. Five-year plans sound silly to me. 

I used to get intense panic attacks thinking of our planet and the universe – our positioning in the middle of nothing. To cope with the overwhelming task of imagining a thing without limits – I’d place our solar system in a white cube instead. A simple room, four walls, a ceiling, a floor. An imaginary 3D render way simpler for the mind to make up than whatever herculean effort infinity demands of it.

Out in space, there isn’t air to breathe and I needed this room to dream.

(David Lynch once said not to worry about the dark but to focus on turning on the light instead. We could all use a little simplicity. Little to no TV. And more of our small but real world.)