when i die, can i vanish into you?

on fear, desire, and Lady Gaga

I’m an overthinker. Held hostage by an unending stream of thoughts, I find it hard to sleep at night sometimes. I stare at the ceiling and try to make sense of the unknown. Tonight, I’m haunted once again by the same question: What happens after I die?

It’s not the pain of dying that scares me. It’s the idea that one day, I’ll simply disappear from the face of Earth. I won’t be here to enjoy the sun with my loved ones, listen to new music, or witness society evolve through time. Life on Earth will go on as usual, but I won’t…

I know what you’re thinking: this existential fear isn’t helpful at all. I wish I could switch it off too, but I’ve grown too cynical to ever ignore it. Death lingers behind my every thought, and I’m strangely drawn to things that remind me of it. I unintentionally found myself on #GriefTok, where people mourn and bond over their losses. Every post on #GriekTok is a gut punch; a painful but necessary reminder of the fragility of life.

Sometimes, my fear of death gets in the way of my living. Every day, we inch closer to our deaths yet there’s no way to pause or rewind. The future is a fog I can’t see through, and the uncertainty can be crippling. Perhaps that’s why I find comfort in the past. Be it retreating into old TV shows or songs, nostalgia has become my drug of choice.

Speaking of nostalgic music, we have to talk about Lady Gaga. Like many older Gen Z kids, I was raised by THE Mother Monster herself. I remember fondly when it was impossible to escape her in pop culture (not that I wanted to). Gaga came onto the scene being unapologetically herself, and that’s exactly why I look up to her. Growing up, I’ve always felt unsure of myself. Who am I? Do I belong here? Do I have to change myself to fit in?

I speak for many fans when I say that Gaga’s 2011 album Born This Way was a revelation. Her message of self-love and empowerment was simple but seismic, and with her music came emancipation, giving us the freedom and courage to exist in a world that didn’t always feel fit for us.

On "MAYHEM," Lady Gaga is Monstro StefaniGaga

Since then, I’ve closely followed Gaga’s career for over a decade now, and earlier this year, she released her seventh studio album MAYHEM. On my first listen, I was instantly drawn to one song that gave me goosebumps: “Vanish into You.”

Some songs take time to grow, others hook you immediately, but “Vanish” feels like a song that I’ve known all my life. While it’s a new song, it already feels nostalgic to me. Not because the melody was familiar, but because the emotion was. It tapped into that exact feeling I’ve carried with me for years—the fear of death mixed with the desire to live life to its fullest.

Sonically, “Vanish” is a soaring dance-pop anthem, soaked in shades of wistful euphoria that I love best in my favorite Gaga songs like “The Edge of Glory” and “Marry the Night.”

“When I die, can I vanish into you?” Gaga asks in the song’s final chorus. It’s a seemingly inane question, but I see it as a vulnerable and human plea. Gaga does not want immortality nor does she care about being remembered by the world. She understands that death is inevitable, but she wonders if the harsh finality of death could be softened by love. If vanishing could mean merging into someone, not simply disappearing. And if afterlife was a hoax, at least we could still live on in someone else.

Last Wednesday, I caught Gaga live in Singapore on her recent run of promotional shows for MAYHEM here. I teared up when she surprised us at the piano with “Always Remember Us This Way” and lost my cool at the show-stopping theatrics of “Poker Face,” but it was the precious moment of fan engagement during “Vanish into You” that was so beautiful to witness in person.

“I wrote this song about what you feel like saying to somebody when you just love them so much but you feel so afraid,” Gaga explained on stage before heading down to the stadium floor to greet fans who swarmed her for autographs and selfies.

I’ve already felt so seen that night—Gaga has a way of making misfits feel like they belong—but during “Vanish into You,” I felt it so viscerally in my bones. It was like she was speaking directly to this tangled knot of fear and desire I’ve carried inside me for years. Of course, in a twist so cruel it’s almost poetic, my phone storage ran out right during the song… but maybe that’s fitting? Perhaps some moments are meant to live only in our memory.

To return to the question I posed above, I honestly still don’t know what happens after I die. And I’ll never know for sure. But now, I have this song and the memory of Gaga singing it to a stadium full of strangers, each of us holding onto our quiet fears, yet all marching toward the same inevitable end.

Death is certain. But so is life. It does me no good to keep hiding in the past when life insists on moving forward with or without me. Maybe I just have to make the best memories I can with the people I love in this short amount of time I have on Earth, so when the time comes, I can vanish into them. And vice versa.

If we’re gonna vanish one day, we might as well vanish into each other.