So I have this question that’s been stuck in my head for a few years now, and it really hasn’t left me alone lately. As an attempt to toss some of the weight I’ve got up there, I’m going to exorcise it on you, and I hope that someone has an answer, and a real one at that, but the trouble is, I’m fairly certain there isn’t one.

If you could choose to know your future, every last bit, would you?

Honestly, my answer changes every now and then, based on my current situation. When I was 8 years old, my grandfather James died. Up to that point in time, and aside from my mother, he was the closest thing I had to a father, because mine did a runner shortly after I was born (and I don’t say this to disclose any obvious daddy issues or to make you think unfairly of my biological father). He’d been dying for some time of lung cancer, so this wasn’t a shock so much as it was unsettling, because it was the first time I realized that at any given moment, any one of us could simply stop existing. A couple years earlier my grandfather Philip had passed, probably of liver failure due to a lasting period of alcoholism and drug addiction, but because of his experiences in the Vietnam War, and the way that he chose to handle them once he returned home, he never really existed for me. Now, I know how awful that sounds, I do, and I’m truly sorry about that, because I know what he meant to a lot of the people in my family, but to me, he was a shadow of a man, and he’d never been anything more than that because I hadn’t been alive to see it. James, however, had been a massive part of my life, one of the very few people that mattered to me, which, when it comes to children, we know is a relatively small number. For kids, people are about what they can do for you, and that’s not horrible because they’re children, and that’s what their life is supposed to be about at that age. The only people that typically escape that for a child are their parents, and this is because they spend so much time with each other that not loving that person isn’t an option, because if you didn’t, you’d hate them, and since children are almost immune to true misery (which is exactly what hatred fucking does), that’s not viable. James was very close to a parent for me, and when he died, when he actually ceased to exist, it wasn’t poetic, it wasn’t beautiful in a silver lining kind of way, and I still dislike the sentiment “at least he’s not in pain anymore,” because that’s fucking waste of oxygen to say. Any sentence starting with “at least” is sympathy, not empathy. We should feel with one another. I don’t want your pity, and I don’t want you to console me. It’s all right to be sad, and some of us really need to understand that.

When he died, I wanted so badly to know my future, and I would’ve given just about anything, because everyone kept telling me that things would be okay, and I wanted to know that they were right. I wanted to know for certain that I wouldn’t always feel the way I felt in that moment.

When I was between the ages of 9 and 13, I had no idea what my answer would have been because I had a fight for both sides. My grandmother’s husband Victor had a bad habit of putting his hands where they didn’t belong. For years, I had no idea it was wrong, and by the time I did, in my mind, I was too far gone to say anything. I’d convinced myself that saying anything would ruin my life, and I chose Victor, because I thought he was the lesser of two evils. I had to choose between hurting myself or hurting my family. I had to choose between my heart and my mother’s. I wanted to know the future because I wanted to believe that one day I’d get out of there. I didn’t want to know because I was afraid that I wouldn’t.

When I was 17, the longest relationship I’d ever had ended. I didn’t know how to live without him. I was convinced he was the love of my life, even though he’d cheated on me, even though he was, at that point, seeing someone else, even though I was more in love with my memories of him than I was with him. I loved him so much it hurt. What I failed to realize was that it hurt to love him. I didn’t want to know my future, because I was terrified that he wouldn’t be in it.

I’ve vacillated between answers for this question for so long that I’ve started asking others, hoping they have some kind of insight that I lack. Right now, I don’t want to know, and not because of fear. I don’t want to know because that’s boring as fuck. Admittedly, I’m the kind of person that loves to watch the same television over and over and over again, because I like knowing what happens, and I still love the story. The thing is though, with my life, I want the first time experience the whole time. I want jump scares. I want to be invested in this shit, and not with the casually relaxed attitude of someone who already knows what happened, but with the excitement and fear and hope of someone who has no idea what’s coming next. I don’t mean to be cliche, but I want to live every day like it’s my last, because to the best of my knowledge (and with my history of people dropping dead) it may very well be. So let’s fuck it up.