Allow me a moment to ponder on that.
Since I was a young child, I've always been fascinated by death.
Death was a question of mine that reading dictionaries, encyclopedias or books would not answer.
It all started when I was about 4/5 and there was a show on the telly (My sister once told me it was X-Files, but I'm not too sure).. basically, they accidentally buried this man alive and he had to crawl out of his coffin.
I've always blamed that 5 minutes of accidental exposure as the undoing of my sanity.
I could not sleep that night because for the first time, I was thinking about death.
Fear slowly gave way to fascination and I became fascinated by death rituals/rites/believes/what happens after etc..
I remember that I used to often enough wrap myself up really tight in the blanket, lay still and stop breathing.. because I wanted to know what it was like to be dead.
At 7, I wondered how easily does a person die and foolishly contemplated finding out while staring at my Mum's meat cleaver.
At around 8-9, I discovered that strangling someone causes death and tried it on myself.
At 11, I became slightly obsessed with the Egyptian Book of Death.. and their mummies and tombs.
Also around the same time, the kids in school started reading this popular series called True Singaporean Ghost Stories. They made me read one and I became even more fascinated. Ghosts.. that was something I always knew (and personally, feared) but never thought to consider as part of my deadly fascination.
I kept trying to find the scientific answer and there isn't any but superstition had many answers for me and it was just a matter of me picking my favourite one.
Chinese superstition, Western believes, Malay demons.. there was so many to pick from.
Then my Mum began to notice my unhealthy interests and told me that Christianity does not promote believes in such things. That did me no good because a ghost does appear in the Bible.. and I was bored enough during all those Sundays in church to find out.
My Mum has reminded me constantly, since she discovered, to not fall into the blackhole that I'm digging for myself, my spiritual self and my sanity. She believes the devil is clouding my mind.
If anybody knows me well enough, there is no spiritual self and there is just a grain left of my sanity to save.
Then, came my first horror movie. Looking back, it was quite a laugh but I was genuinely horrified back then. Horrifyingly fascinated.
I think it's safe to say, that my ongoing love-hate relationship with death is still going strong.
In recent years, I've found myself messing with an Ouija board, talking out loud in the dark seeking a reply, turning around sharply in the dark seeking a figure and I honestly believe, I'm becoming interested in holding or participating in a seance.
My mind and believes are purely scientific, as you might already know.
I have a love for physics.
But above (or below) all that science, is what I would call my 'desire' to see proof of a parallel universe quite unlike our mortal one.
Oh, and I'm still curious about death, oh yeah.
That has not and will never change.
Post-man-climbing-out-of-coffin times, I find myself wondering how long does the pain last when getting shot in the head, how many stabs to the stomach does one endure before succumbing to the pain and shit like that.
It isn't pretty, I know.
It's not as if I've ever considered stabbing anybody.
I always wondered how long will I feel the pain after the shot, or how many stabs can I endure.
Guess it's safe to say that my fascination is slowly becoming violent.
Throughout my life, I've always wondered why.
Why are these thoughts always on my mind?
If I hadn't watched that show on the telly, would I be different?
