Sanitarium “The Gripping Fears”

“The decisions we make at the bottom of the hill, before the horror has started and we can no longer control whether or not we are screaming...it doesn't seem to matter what it is we think we have done to prepare ourselves. Once we are in it, we are in it, and there is not a plan, strategy, or tool, that can see us through it unscathed.

I wonder often of the affect fear has on the heart.

I want to look it up, but I am scared of what I will find.

I looked it up. The word of the day is escalation, and it seems that in the same way a 30 minute jog can affect more than just your breathing, so too does fear affect far more than you could ever imagine. Pain that would normally be manageable becomes unmanageable. The anxieties that once bothered us during the night become the waking, pounding yelling that make it hard to leave the house.

It makes sense.

I know what it feels like.

I used to just have headaches. Simple things that were easy to manage. But as time has passed these migraines have become more and more intense, as I sleep less and less. And when I sleep, it is in a way that one would never call rest, because how could someone rest with these images always running through your mind?

That is the cumulative harm of fear. And I have been scared for very very long.

I remember reading when I was younger, little stories about people having the same dream over and over again. I always considered that unrealistic, as our minds just don't seem to work that way. The reality is that I was kinda right. Most of the time we do not repeat dreams, and ultimately lack full control, if we wish to be rested in a way that matters.

But sometimes something won't leave your head.

Someone you loved more than anything in the world.

An injury.

And sometimes we dream of something when there is nothing else we can think about. When every single second of every day is spent focused on that one thing that rolls over and over in our heads for what feels like days and months and years but is in fact perhaps an hour.

I have gone to doctors, and they have given me medicine and taught me mantras and meditations. I have learned how to focus the mind in a way that you wouldn't imagine to be normal. Because it isn't. I can focus and focus and focus, and it may look like I am doing well.

But that is only because I found one part of the horror to focus on. And in the same way that a injury flares back to life after a lull in the pain, or our lungs may burn even after we have come to rest, so too does the fear and the anxiety flare back up once the mantras and the meditations stop.

It is always there, waiting for me.

It is always there, and there is no escape from It.

Not in dreams.

Not in reality.

And I have tried. I have looked and sought, searching for something, anything that would replace that awful thing gripping my chest. And I would do anything, absolutely anything, just to stop feeling my heart drumming my body up into a frenzy, building and building until it feels like every single part of me will snap and break in two, and yet it never does.

Though it feels like it does.

The only time it stops, the only time I am not thinking about it, is when I sleep. I thankfully don't remember the dreams anymore, in the same way you don't remember going home after a long day of work.

This is all so ordinary for me now, and yet you would think it would go away or change, but it doesn't. It just keeps building and building, my mind constantly screaming, crying for me to please just find a fucking way, any way, to bring this horrible nightmare to a close. And I have tried. I have tried and tried and tried and tried and tried. I am at a loss as to what I am supposed to do, and every night it gets dark and scary, and every day that morning light brings me no refuge, for I know the thing hiding behind the sun.

And I know that this is all so fucking stupid, so very stupid, to see a thing that cannot be, to cry and weep and beg for death, life, anything, just not more of this, please gods just not more of this, over and over again, with my heart thundering and my body shaking and my temperature flaring and they tell me, they tell me I am going to die, and that if I keep this up there is no way that that won't be the case sooner or later.

And time passes.

And I am alive.

And I am filled with fear.

Fear of the thing behind the sun.

And I just want it to stop. I so very much want it it it it to stop...stop.

Please stop...stop hurting me anymore.

Why...and horror, and fear, and gnashing teeth, and fever, and blood on the floor and running from my nose...

WHY

WHY

Why

Am I so scared?”

The woman was moved to the sanitarium, for her safety and to try and get as consistent of help as is possible. I don't remember the last time I heard about the place, let alone when was the last time I went to it.

I saw it once, when I was little. We were on a school trip, and there it was, in the distance, looming outside of my window. Even back then I was frightened by it, even if I know now that being scared of such a place is part of the problem.

People see a sanitarium, and they assume that it is just a horror show where terribly sick, possibly insane people run around. But the reality is that places like that can often be one of the last refuges for those who are truly ill and need help. Though it is true some places are still as bad as you would believe, the reality is that many have more oversight than you would imagine.

I went to visit the woman after I was told that she hadn't slept in three days. When I was asked to come I was confused, since I do not count as a healthcare provider in any sense. But the members of the facility insisted, as they imagined that if anyone could convince her that there is no such thing as monsters, it would be me.

How wrong they were.

I did my best, but I think I did more harm than good. My curiosity got the better of me, and instead of asking questions about why she feels this way and all that, I instead asked her about the thing hiding behind the sun.

I couldn't help it really.

Not with what I deal with day in and day out.

I don't know what I was supposed to think, or how I was supposed to help. She said that hiding behind the sun is darkness, and I reassured her that it was indeed true, as space is full of dark spaces.

But she told me no, I do not understand. She said that It wasn't darkness, behind the sun.

She said It is the darkness. It is not hiding.

It is simply waiting.

A few days later she slipped into a coma. Many attempts have been made to try and wake her up, but nothing seems to work.

Its up to her now.

But I think all she wants to do is sleep.