#thrashing against the tight grip of my straitjacket

[star-blitz]

long rant incoming. i had to get this off my chest.

tw: brief mentions of suicide, general absurdist disassociation :)))

a great flaw in the human design (if humans were designed at all) is that we start with a blank sheet of paper. utterly clueless. miniature creatures that have barely developed enough to be thrust into the world and figure it out. so, to respond to this overwhelming situation, babies learn things quickly and make them fundamental truths in their lives. they have to, for stability, for something concrete to hold onto, but the concrete is an illusion. we're painting styrofoam grey and praying it holds out for the rest of our lives.

because these rules do persist throughout the rest of our lives, both the ones we learn ourselves and the ones our parents teach us, whether consciously or subconsciously. family is made of one mom and one dad, and they're here to take care of me. the ground hurts so maybe don't bang your head on it. crying gets you what you want. there are also the rules we learn when we're a little older - pink is for girls, god created everything, being smart is good. and these rules work just fine for you, until one day you're eighteen and there's no rational way that jesus actually died and came back to life, and couldn't God just not make alcohol/drugs in the first place if they were so bad for us and why should I feel ashamed of the natural human sexual behaviour that god himself created (allegedly)?

suddenly it doesn't make sense. the illusion is dwindling, flickering at the edges. the styrofoam is disintegrating. it's starting to rot from the inside out. 

i've always been fascinated by this hypothetical science experiment. super unethical, obviously. but I've always wanted to know how it would affect humans to grow up on a completely different set of rules. what if we took 25 newborn babies and stuck them in a room and taught them that blue was actually red and men are only supposed to fall in love with other men and yellow is actually the colour for girls? what if they grew up in a room where gender didn't exist, where apples were a delicacy and caviar was served to the platypuses, who are the actual appropriate domestic pet? these are all totally harmless things. 'facts' that are actually just pure human construction. there are, of course, more unethical rules you could impress upon their young minds. murder is actually good for society. death is desirable. polyamory is satanic and 'satanic' is a positive adjective because in this version of events, satan was the good guy and god was the villain; in fact, one should cheat on their partner as often as possible. 

i can't help but fantasize about what it would have been like if i was born into an atheist family and the idea of god was never presented to me. or at least not at an early enough age with such absolute resolve that god became one of my concrete tethers, one of my absolute facts. because now i'm starting to question whether god exists at all and i think i'm shocking my system. it simply can't compute this new fact i'm trying to present it with. it just doesn't know what to do with itself. i'm fracturing its safety blank, the it she constructed when it was still so terrified of this big world and searching for a foundation. 

i'm starting to lose my mind to the realization that there is no such thing as reality. over the years, I began noticing it in small pieces, bite size, mostly digestible. i started thinking about how time was entirely made up by humans; who decided how long a second lasted anyways? no one actually knows what an atom looks like, we're all just guessing. god is the biggest guess of them all. we are a speck of sand in a desert that is a speck of sand in all the deserts that have ever existed. we know nothing, so we comfort ourselves with the fruitless pursuit of knowledge. isn't it crazy that the closest we can get to scientific fact is just a theory? 

someone else must feel this way, surely. someone must share this feeling that I am an idiot, surrounded by idiots, wandering in a place without knowing how I got here, how this all came to be or what it all means. the lack of control is enough to make you want to kill yourself. the lack of knowing is enough to drive you insane while you build up the courage. 

WHAT IS THE MEANING OF ANY OF THIS?

WHY AM I HERE?

WHY DO I EXIST AT THE SAME TIME AS 5G SATELLITES, MASS DEFORESTATION, SO KATE LOUBOUTINS AND THE TRUMP ADMINISTRATION?

i know i will never get any answers. perhaps because there aren't any. the likelihood of god existing or not is the same as the likelihood for any deity out there existing or not. it's 50/50. it's a yes or no. i know there's no use driving myself crazy about this and wasting away whatever little precious time i have on this earth. i cant be one of those idiots who spends their whole life contemplating life and forgets to actually live it. but it's so all-encompassing. so grossly overwhelming. sometimes i think it would be nice to push all this to the back of my mind, let it linger like an afterthought, let myself feel the thrill of not knowing and choosing to live my life anyway. like tightroping over a canyon untethered. if i look down, i will fall. i need to keep my eyes focused straight ahead. 

[missvalerietanner]

Story: Straitjacket Sisters Words: 683 Summary: Nash and Caroline, a couple of nine years, return to Caroline’s hometown in Georgia to visit her mother on her death bed and reconcile with her two sisters. Less than a month into their troubling visit, Nash vanishes. Everyone believes he simply ditched Caroline and left. She refuses to believe the man she knew so well would leave her without even a goodbye, choosing instead to hunt for proof that he was taken by force.

This scene takes place after Nash has been missing for one entire week.

Caroline rolled onto her side in her fitful sleep, seeking any manner of peace in the shifting darkness of the bedroom. She pinched her eyes shut; the shadows behind her eyelids danced in a flurry of colors, growing brighter the harder she squeezed. Exhausted and eager for rest, she relented, opening her eyes in defeat.

Lying beside her was Nash.

Her heart leapt into her throat, and joy swelled her mind. He was here; he was safe. The how or why didn’t bother her; she was so relieved to have him back. She pried one hand free from the folds of her pillow and reached to him. Tears leaked from her weary eyes when he reached for her in return, hugging his palm to hers and threading his fingers between her own.

“Nash,” she breathed out. “You’re here.”

He squeezed tighter to her hand. “I’m never far from you.”

His voice sounded wrong, distorted. His words were coarse and uneven, delivered by a froggy throat and an unfamiliar tongue. Droplets of water dripped from the corner of his mouth and soaking into the bed sheets below, darkening their surface.

Caroline lifted her other hand from beneath the sheets and pressed her fingers to his lips; they were cold. Tears welled heavy against her eyelids.

Nash parted his lips to speak, but only murky water, brown and distorted by the filth it carried, leaked out. She tried to withdrew from him, but he gripped their interlaced hands so tight she winced. And he snatched hold of her other hand around the wrist.

With a roar—or a scream—clouded by the water forever running from his throat, Nash leapt on top of her, pinning her to the mattress. She struggled beneath, but his weight was insurmountable. The more she pushed to be free, the heavier he became, sinking knees and elbows into the mattress to hold her still. Her hips were bound by his thighs; her chest crushed by the pressure of his, and her arms shackled to the bed with his calloused hands as the chains.

He flattened his body against her, and she felt her own form sink beneath the rising mattress like the surface of the ocean. She could feel every piece of him against her skin, and she whimpered, so longing for his touch. But not like this. Never like this.

He leveled his face before hers, and his bold blue eyes stared at her. The kindness she loved was still there, hidden beneath a darker fog of terror. He brought his mouth to her lips where she gasped for breath, incapable of filling her crushed lungs. She had no choice but to part her lips, a fish out water desperate to live by any means reachable.

He opened his mouth to hers, but his lips never touched. More of the distorted and discolored water flooded from his throat and drenched her mouth, her nose, her entire face, plunging her beneath the surface. She shut her eyes against the filthy water’s sting but couldn’t stop her throat from gurgling through the sludge.

She fought harder against his bindings, thrashing wildly while caught between the mattress and his strength. But he only pushed harder. She sank faster, and the dingy water overtook her, consuming her lungs until the blackness called her home.

A scream tore from her dry throat, and she lunged upward from the pillows. In the blurring shadows of her bedroom, she swept her head from side-to-side for clarity of her surroundings.

No Nash, and no water.

Breathless from her torture, she sank against the flattened, sweat-soaked pillows for support and wiped at the drying tears streaked across her cheeks. When her heartbeat eased, she slipped out of bed and trotted to the window. She pressed her hands to the glass and peered through its stained surface to the river flowing strong through the property—the same river that claimed her father’s life.

“He’s close,” she whispered to herself, a reminder of the truths the nightmare had offered.

She felt the weight of time more than ever. Nash didn’t have much longer.

Author’s Notes: Been watching A LOT of symbolism videos on YouTube, mostly ones pertaining to Silent Hill, and wow wow WOW, they are hella inspiring. Digging deeper into a series I already love to uncover all the layers I didn’t recognize is very cool.

I highly recommend thegamingmuse if you’re a fan of the series. She does other games too, but the Silent Hill ones are by far the best.

Inspired by all the symbolism I’ve got bouncing around in my head, this scene came to life. (It actually came to me late last night as I was drifting off to sleep.) 

It’s primary goal is to deal with Caroline’s fear of loss and hint at a fear she harbors but wasn’t fully aware of: a fear of drowning, the cause of her father’s death and now, if her dream is a premonition, the possible cause of death to her boyfriend, Nash. :D