• xe/xer/any

mysterious individual


pervocracy
@pervocracy

It's embarrassing, being afraid of thunderstorms. It makes me feel like a baby.

But honestly, it's not the storm itself. It's the things that manifest during it.


And like, yeah, I don't really feel unsafe physically, I'm not some kind of science denier. I take all the normal precautions the Weather Service recommends - stay indoors, turn off everything electrical, don't use the shower or sink, don't read books, don't pray - and I know that the things can't really touch me.

It's just... it's a trigger for me, I guess? It's okay when the clouds are further away, when the lightning flashes are at twenty-mississippi or so, and you really just get glimpses. I mean I don't like it, the way that you can't avert your eyes because they'll appear wherever you're looking, but it's like a tenth of a second. I can deal.

I really don't like it when there's a long roll of thunder, though. I think that happens because the lightning bolt is horizontal towards you, so you hear the end of it before the start, because of the whole speed-of-sound thing? Anyway the problem is that whenever the thunder's going they can talk and I... I just can't. I'm supposed to medicate before storms, I've talked this out with my therapist and I promised him and then I always second-guess "oh but what if a tree falls down and I need to get out of the house but I'm too messed up" and end up raw-dogging the whole experience.

So when the storm's far away then it's mostly people you've disappointed in the past, right? Honestly a lot of it is banal as hell. Someone's skeletal face appearing in a blue flash just to remind me of that time in sixth grade when I forgot to bring in the group project and now they're dead so they get to yell at me for it every time there's a cold front. Thanks, buddy. Hope you're enjoying spending the afterlife that way.

Okay, that's not fair of me. They're not conscious. We know that. It's just the electricity. I'm sorry. I'm projecting.

Anyway the part I'm not so good with is more when it gets closer. In the medium zone, when the rain is starting to hit the windows - or on the other end, when the thunder's dying down and it's just rain again - that's even harder for me because of the time thing, where it starts being people who haven't died yet, and people you haven't even made angry yet. Some charred husk in the lightning flashes booming out "YOU LET ME DIE" five-mississippi later and guy, I can't even recognize you, how the hell am I supposed to prevent whatever it is?

Again, I've talked to my therapist about this, a lot. And I'm honestly sorry to be hashing it all out again online like this. I'm such a trauma dumper. We all go through this and we all know how fucking time works, it's not shit that you can prevent by knowing about it. And the charred thing is probably just because they got cremated and the death thing is probably like some relative being super dramatic about me not visiting their nursing home as much as they wanted. My family would absolutely do that. Hell of a lot more likely than me spontaneously deciding to light someone on fire. I mean seriously, "you let me die" is one of the most common things to hear, because so many goddamn families are like that. I know this all intellectually. But it's still hard.

I wish it were safe to have the lights on, at least. Or a flashlight or a candle or something? Look, I'm just venting, I'm not really going to do it, the last thing I need is for them to have a continuous energy source. I think we all make that mistake exactly once.

It's when the storm is right overhead, though. When the flashes are every couple seconds and the thunder is right there shaking your house. That's the part I just cannot fucking handle. When it's your own dead self like three inches from your face no matter which way you look. That is my goddamn trigger.

I mean, I don't even know if I should be pathologizing it like that, I mean yeah I've got some diagnoses, don't we all ha ha, but I don't know anyone who enjoys it. It is harder when you live alone, I think? I don't know how much difference it makes, though. I know a lot of people who live together end up going to separate rooms anyway during storms just so they don't have their ghosts telling all their freaky secrets. You never know when some shit is going to come up that could break up a marriage.

Anyway. I'm sorry, I'm rambling because I don't really like talking about this part but I think writing this post is kind of therapeutic for me so I'm going to finish it.

The part that gives me the real-deal chest-pain panic attacks is at zero-mississippi, when it's me, myself, and I, and every lightning flash it's so up close that I don't just know I'm going to be buried, I know it's going to be in some real soggy ground

and then in that window-rattling thunder voice I'm screaming at me

and I can never quite make out the words.


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in reply to @pervocracy's post:

I read quite a bit of this before realizing it was a story and not a genuine attempt at processing psychosis and/or PTSD triggered by thunderstorms. I was starting to feel pretty concerned 😭

(I mean, not to say it couldn’t also be those things, it certainly could be for all I know.)