Sanitarium “The Sky Blinked”

“I was never content, even as a child. Something always gripped at the edges of my existence, a sense of dread and pessimism. For years I looked for answers to why I felt this way. I took medicine, saw therapists, and went to more self help classes than I can remember. All failed to free me from this feeling.

So I started to study alternatives. I gave up on science and self help crap and decided to look towards something intangible. The world gave me no pleasure, so surely there must be something outside of it that could bring me joy. I went to churches and synagogues. I went to temples and fringe groups, always looking for answers.

Instead, the answers found me, and now they are all that I can see.

It was a late night, drugged out of my mind on whatever it was I thought would bring me closer to joy. My vision dipped and shifted, as it had so many times before. But this time I worked hard to maintain my focus. I forced myself to narrow my view towards the sky outside my window, searching about the stars.

They seemed to shimmer, to glow with the most amazing brilliance. In an instant, all those years of dread slipped away. I was left feeling empty, but at peace. It was...everything I wanted.

And it left me vulnerable.

The stars seemed to blink, as if they were staring back at me. Then there was the sounds of wings, legions of them tussling about in a deafening cacophony. I knew then that I made a mistake, that I had somehow failed to recreate the rituals in the books.

Or perhaps all those rituals were simply false, and I was simply seeing something true at last.

The dread...the dread I feel now in immeasurable amounts fell upon me like a shroud, and I became aware that perhaps I had looked too hard. That I had failed to understand what it was I was looking for.

I felt cold, sopping wet feathers wrap themselves around me, like they were trying to crush me. The weight of it was even too great for me to scream, as I was sure that would die under the pressure of it. As the hours passed, even that terrible weight became normal, and I learned to carry it as I did any other weight.

I had expected it to go away once I woke up from my addled mind, but it didn't. I realize now that what I saw pierced right through all the drugs and the meditations. It pierced everything, rending my core apart.

I have given up on things. I have stopped talking to my friends and family. It seems...so pointless considering what is coming. We are all so very small in the sight of the thing above. Even our world is but a speck of sand, cast upon an infinite barren waste.

And soon...soon all that we know will fade. The seals will break and all will be consumed by the darkness that lurks out of sight.

What I saw that night I know had a touch of divinity, but not the sort I wanted. It was all the crushing weight of knowing the unknowable only to discover that it was wholly and completely without compassion.

I do not believe in gods in any measure, but what I saw surely could be considered one by my small mind, for when that black canvas of the sky blinked, it was not separate eyes, but a uniform construct.

The sky itself had blinked with as much dispassion and apathy as could be mustered. It was not a sign for me to follow to greater truths.

It was just something as large as space itself blinking between its observation of all those things that seem so small to it.

The number was seven, but now it four, or maybe three. I cannot think clearly enough to consider anything other than that terrible thing I have seen. It is all consuming and overwhelming, and has left me barely able to write this out. I cannot begin to explain how much this hurts. Writing this. It feels like an agony...the worst pain you have ever felt. I feel that way all the time.

They put me in a sanitarium, in a place without windows. They grant me the mercy of never again having to see the night sky. But before I was committed, I took one last look at the night sky, just to make sure. The experience was like staring into the sun, for when I decided to look, I think it noticed me.

No one knows it exists, and I think my knowledge doesn't threaten it in the least. All this knowledge affords me is a little more pain, and a sense of dread that suddenly makes sense. I have always in some part of me known that something was lurking. That there was something I wasn't seeing. And now that I have, I cannot forget it.

I can think of nothing else.

The sky blinked, and when I looked a second time it looked back.

And to my horror I realized...

It was closer now.”

I have been trying to do the right things lately, but I can't be sure about it. The events of the last week, the last few months really, weigh on me even now, and I am struggling to lift myself up.

Once the dust settles I will be well, but it feels like I have given myself so many allowances already, like I haven't been trying hard enough.

I know that isn't true. I have been working my ass off to get where I have gotten to, and considering what I have gone through the last few months I would say it is a miracle I am functioning at all.

Any number of the things I have experienced would be enough to bring my life to a standstill, but still I press on, ignoring any resistance so I won't end up falling backwards.

That is what scares me so damn much.

The thought that even after everything I have done to pick myself up that I will end up falling back into those old feelings and habits just like before. I have all the support I need, so why do I keep ending up feeling miserable?

It's a cycle of ups and downs seemingly without end, and all I want is some time to stop and smell the flowers. I want to sleep for days on end and go out to the woods and just commune with nature for a few hours.

I want many things, but the world will not stop for me, so I have to press on no matter what. I'll take the hits where I can and do what I can when I can to settle myself, if only so I won't be left feeling so damn restless and disjointed.

The leaves are falling, and I can smell the crispness in the air at night.

Autumn is coming. It is my favorite time of year.

It's a time for harvest and for preparations. It is a time when we sit down and drink some piping hot apple cider and feel the cold concrete under our asses and really give ourselves a solid minute to consider all we did with our year and how we want it to end.

I don't always get to enjoy the season for one reason or another, but this year I intend to do so in full.

First things first though.

I need to go take a nice walk in the woods, and I need to pick up some decorations.

This year I am making my own mask for Halloween like I used to as a kid. I have decided that I I am dressing up as the creature from my dreams.

Maybe I will get some scares in while I am at it.

Make kids get why even after all these years that thing has left me in sheer terror of dreaming.

I ordered some ink from Japan. I am hoping it will arrive in time. The costume won't ever come together if I can't first replicate the smell.