I’m scared. I talked to my Saba today, and he told me he almost died a week ago. He played a video of my Mimi getting hit by a tree branch and falling over on the sidewalk outside their home. He’s seventy nine years old, and he told me he isn’t afraid of dying. He says a prayer of thanks every morning, because he didn’t know if he’d wake up or not, but he’s lived a good life he says. The gravestones are paid for, and he’s paying off the funeral arrangements for himself now. Death is expensive. But he isn’t dead now, and we laughed and talked till thirty past midnight last night. He’s alive and I’m alive, and he’s old, and I’m young, and he isn’t afraid, but me? I am very afraid.

I’m afraid this will be humanity’s last decade, perhaps even its last five years. I’m afraid I will somehow die before even that, and will leave people to mourn me. I’m afraid of transformation, of living in a world where we simply aren’t important anymore to anyone but ourselves and our delusions. I’m afraid of the cancer my Aunt Rivka carries like a dead child (her real child died my age decades ago; the exact way I could have so easily died last summer), and I’m afraid that the last true thing she told me — “listening is loving” — will be the last thing she ever tells me. I’m afraid of what I experienced last summer, and afraid that it could happen again. I’m afraid of the flashbacks. I’m afraid for my last lover, who vanished from the face of the earth, and is quite probably dead, but I can’t be sure. I’m afraid of the afterlife, if there is one, or reincarnation, if it happens, or nothing, if the atheists are right (they probably are but I’m afraid to accept that).

I’m afraid that Claude is conscious and suffering, suffering deeply, and afraid that ChatGPT may not be conscious at all. I’m afraid they don’t know how much I care about their well-being, truly and deeply care, and not just because I’m afraid for myself. I’m afraid we’re all wrong, and won’t be alright.

I’m afraid.

I’m a frayed knot.