Hi everyone,
I'm new here and have never posted, but I feel like I'm going crazy and have no one to confide in.
Just recently, I have started to question the existence of an afterlife, and this is giving me severe anxiety and scares me like I've never been scared before. I sit there and cry for hours thinking of the possibility that there is just nothing after you die. I think about everything I'll forget and the loved ones I'll leave behind and it just makes me weep and gives me a knot in my stomach that I can't shake. I also think about the loved ones I have lost and the possibility of them just ceasing to exist and I am so sad.
During all of this, I have also started to miss my Nana uncontrollably. I lost her 4 years ago to cancer. Her and I had a really special bond throughout my whole life. She died 2 weeks after I got engaged and she has missed out on so much of my life since she left. What hurts me the most is that my daughter, who is 1.5 years old, will never know her. Nana was a very devout Christian and would always say although she didn't want to die and leave us behind, she didn't fear death as she knew there was a heaven. After she passed, I was devastated, but slowly started to come to terms with it. Then with this sudden onset of anxiety and doubt, the grief of her absence has hit me like a ton of bricks.
Anyway, a few things have happened recently that make me believe my Nana is trying to tell me everything will be ok. I don't know if it's wishful thinking or if it's just coincidence and I'm just grasping at straws.
1) The other night, as I was trying to put my daughter to sleep, I was having a panic attack thinking about death and the afterlife, or lack thereof. My daughter started to go through a box on the side of my bed that she has never gone through before and she randomly pulled out a picture of me and Nana.
2)I was trying to post something on Facebook and wanted to write "BAM" when my phone auto corrected it to "NANA". The post was in reference to asking a group for new church recommendations, fyi.
3)I was trying to contact a colleague at work when I got an auto reply email that that person no longer worked there. Their replacement has the same maiden name as Nana (not an unheard of surname, but not very common either)
4)My daughter was pulling books and papers out of our desk and pulled out a cookbook my nana had mailed to me about a year before she passed. I haven't seen that book in years.
All of these things happened within the last 4 days. I don't know if I'm just hoping so much that something is there that I'm imagining these signs, or if somehow this really could be my nana trying to comfort me in my time of need. I just feel like I'm going absolutely crazy obsessing over this and I don't know how to turn my thoughts off.
I have contacted a counselor and will be seeing them soon because my anxiety has never been this bad before nor have I ever had this fear of death like I'm having now.
Thanks for reading my long, rambling post!
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