I don’t think I want a long life because I think it would be beautiful or enlightening or whatever the brochures promise. I want it because apparently I have a personality defect that makes me stay.
Living a very long life would hurt. Like, deeply and consistently. I would watch the same terrible patterns repeat, just with better PR. I’d see harm get a rebrand, a podcast, maybe a wellness filter. I’d outlive people who knew me before certain parts of me calcified. That kind of grief doesn’t go away. It just becomes structural. Load-bearing.
I wouldn’t age into wisdom. I’d age into a walking archive of “I told you so,” which is not as satisfying as it sounds. Memory isn’t a gentle teacher. It’s more like an unpaid intern who keeps resurfacing every worst moment at the worst possible time. Some days I’m pretty sure a long life would straight-up take me out. I already get tired of noticing everything. Of feeling everything. Of being the person whose nervous system apparently signed a lifetime contract without my consent.
I’m not noble about this. I don’t wake up glowing with purpose. I spiral. I dissociate. I make jokes that are probably too dark for polite company and then immediately apologize to no one in particular.
But I also don’t think the answer is going numb or opting out.
One of the most brutal things about being human is how convincing loneliness can be. Pain is excellent at gaslighting. It tells people they’re dramatic, broken, uniquely defective. I know how lethal that isolation gets. I know what happens when suffering thinks it’s an original sin instead of a recurring design flaw.
So if I lived a very long life, it wouldn’t be to save the world. I don’t have that kind of delusion. It would be to keep showing up and saying, yeah, no, you’re not insane. This happened. It messes people up. You’re reacting exactly like a human would, unfortunately.
I don’t want to fix humanity. I just want to be the person who doesn’t vanish when things get uncomfortable. The one who doesn’t rush people toward healing so they’ll be quieter and easier to digest. The one who sits in the mess and makes a joke sharp enough to remind you that you’re still alive.
Hope, for me, isn’t optimism.
It’s stubbornness with a sense of humor.
A long life wouldn’t make me happier or purer. It would make me more scarred, more tired, and way too self-aware. But if it also meant fewer people feeling like they’re the only one rotting quietly inside their own head, even briefly, then fine. I’ll stay.
I don’t want a long life to avoid pain. I want it so pain doesn’t get the satisfaction of thinking it won alone.
E.S. Writing 
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