The countdown started at some point when I was still in high school...probably when I was about sixteen. I sort of just remember deciding that I had too much difficulty picturing my life after a certain point, and that I had a waning interest in whatever followed. I was so disappointed with the way things were going already, I figured if I couldn't make them any better I would just continue to lose interest or something. Pretty morbid for a sixteen-year-old, I guess...
Naturally my parents thought it was fucked up, and kind of worried that maybe I was suffering from the same thing my mom has...but everything passes in time. Later on I explained to everyone that I would rather have my ashes sent up into space than to have them spread out anywhere here on Earth. It was my contention that a postmortem association between myself and anything and everything on this planet was unacceptable. I had finally made up my mind that this world does not make any sense to me, and although I might still want to live, I'd rather not have anything to do with it. Enter: The Astronaut.
From time to time some of my closest friends will still bring it up in passing...
"You've only got three years left," they'll say. And I laugh, because deep down inside I still feel the same way.
