"Every Snowfall"

I have this memory of a younger me, seven, maybe?
Contemplating the meaning of existence on a balcony in Cairo,
Trying to understand what it would feel like had I not existed,
Had the very egg and the very sperm that carried the chromosomes
That make me, me failed to meet; where would I even be?
Wondering if I would oversee my parents from the sky,
Where they said I, and everyone I know, will one day transcend to.
"But I wouldn't have even existed", my thoughts interjected.
I wouldn't have had that very thought, that feeling, it shocked me,
My existence, how un-cemented it all was.
Twenty five years later, I am still struggling with how fleeting it all is,
Life, whether mine or others', really. Mortality.
I blame the frigid weather with every snowfall for my racing heart, triggers.
White, night, ramps, highways, death, all jumbled together
Causing my insides to stir, my hands to shake, my ears to ring,
Causing every organ to come to terms with the one truth, the one certainty
That I know more than the letters of my own name, the one truth
That I have spent my entire life drowning in the darkest wells of my mind.
I thought I was dying the first time it happened to me, I was convinced.
With tears and water running down my face, I raced out of the shower
to say goodbye to my parents, to my very young sisters, will they miss me?
An accelerating heartbeat, a shaking body, the sensation of what I thought was death.
I ran to my mother; I told her everything, or what I thought mattered at the time-
I am afraid of death and I am afraid of dying.