"Ten, nine, eight, seven, six, five, four, three, two, one. I'm coming".
There's a lull in the air of the night which carries you away. Try walking home at 3.30am, inebriated as fuck while you're at it, and find a straight line to guide you home. There will be a lit cigarette tucked between the two out of five fingers of your right hand while you hold a cell phone in the other waiting for your loved one to type out and send what you've been wanting to hear. There'll be a sting; this screeching pain at the back of your head and this strange pain on the left of your chest, like this void that goes on deepening and sucking everything in, but never deep enough. You'll finally give up trying to get home because home is as always just so goddamn far away, and secondly because it doesn't feel like much of a home once you get there anyway. As soon as the guiding line hazes out, which always happens, you will pass out on the streets and wait for it to break new dawn when actually it will be the same as the previous morning's. Hope to never wake up.
But you're never that lucky. You will.
Autophobia. It's a term which was released very recently. They started coming across cases in the 70s where people started losing their minds(probably the Alfred Hitchcock effect) and broke all mirrors and reflecting objects in their vicinity. The examiners realised that it wasn't because of anything absurd that they saw in the mirror which caused this phobia. Except for their own selves.
There was a 20 year-old guy with such a condition maybe a couple of years ago. Unlike others, his case was brought under control. After which he was interviewed.
"I spent a lot of nights blaming myself for what happened. My family was a mess and so was my social life. My parents kept fighting and I spent years trying to be the guy who doesn't lose his cool and solve everything. And I did. At every stepping stone, it was me who was the eldest in the family, trying to keep two kids from throwing things and cursing at each other. I never thought I could falter, and my confidence was going up the skies. I couldn't be broken. I learned that logic and rationality were the answers to everything that existed. They weren't. I didn't keep many people close to me, I didn't think everyone would understand. I was born and brought up that way. Certain turn of events took place all at once. The couple of people I was close to walked out without any explanation and I didn't have it in me to get accustomed to anyone else. My family was a mess as usual, but I couldn't bring it under control because I only had two hands and very little time. I gave up. There came days where I didn't utter a word. My confidence was nowhere to be seen. I stayed in, without turning on the lights even in the night. Instead of intimacy and affection, I searched for solace in blasts of music followed by deafening silence. My dreams and nightmares sent me screaming at night, and they didn't make sense. In all of them, it was just me in a house of mirrors, free falling from nowhere to nowhere. But there was always someone watching, and no matter how hard I tried, I couldn't hide from him. It felt like there was poison coursing through my veins. I started taking the help of alcohol to explain to me why nothing made sense. I didn't want mirrors around me anymore. The view in it was the same, but the perception of it changed everyday. Every night, I passed out due to exhaustion and waited for it to break new dawn the next morning, but it remained the same as the previous morning's. I hoped to never fall asleep because I didn't know what it was that kept its eyes on me and trying to find me each time I hid. So I started to count down to keep my eyes open and not fall asleep. I wasn't that lucky. The next time I opened my eyes, I was him."
There's a lull in the air of the night which carries you away. Try walking home at 3.30am, inebriated as fuck while you're at it, and find a straight line to guide you home. There will be a lit cigarette tucked between the two out of five fingers of your right hand while you hold a cell phone in the other waiting for your loved one to type out and send what you've been wanting to hear. There'll be a sting; this screeching pain at the back of your head and this strange pain on the left of your chest, like this void that goes on deepening and sucking everything in, but never deep enough. You'll finally give up trying to get home because home is as always just so goddamn far away, and secondly because it doesn't feel like much of a home once you get there anyway. As soon as the guiding line hazes out, which always happens, you will pass out on the streets and wait for it to break new dawn when actually it will be the same as the previous morning's. Hope to never wake up.
But you're never that lucky. You will.
Autophobia. It's a term which was released very recently. They started coming across cases in the 70s where people started losing their minds(probably the Alfred Hitchcock effect) and broke all mirrors and reflecting objects in their vicinity. The examiners realised that it wasn't because of anything absurd that they saw in the mirror which caused this phobia. Except for their own selves.
There was a 20 year-old guy with such a condition maybe a couple of years ago. Unlike others, his case was brought under control. After which he was interviewed.
"I spent a lot of nights blaming myself for what happened. My family was a mess and so was my social life. My parents kept fighting and I spent years trying to be the guy who doesn't lose his cool and solve everything. And I did. At every stepping stone, it was me who was the eldest in the family, trying to keep two kids from throwing things and cursing at each other. I never thought I could falter, and my confidence was going up the skies. I couldn't be broken. I learned that logic and rationality were the answers to everything that existed. They weren't. I didn't keep many people close to me, I didn't think everyone would understand. I was born and brought up that way. Certain turn of events took place all at once. The couple of people I was close to walked out without any explanation and I didn't have it in me to get accustomed to anyone else. My family was a mess as usual, but I couldn't bring it under control because I only had two hands and very little time. I gave up. There came days where I didn't utter a word. My confidence was nowhere to be seen. I stayed in, without turning on the lights even in the night. Instead of intimacy and affection, I searched for solace in blasts of music followed by deafening silence. My dreams and nightmares sent me screaming at night, and they didn't make sense. In all of them, it was just me in a house of mirrors, free falling from nowhere to nowhere. But there was always someone watching, and no matter how hard I tried, I couldn't hide from him. It felt like there was poison coursing through my veins. I started taking the help of alcohol to explain to me why nothing made sense. I didn't want mirrors around me anymore. The view in it was the same, but the perception of it changed everyday. Every night, I passed out due to exhaustion and waited for it to break new dawn the next morning, but it remained the same as the previous morning's. I hoped to never fall asleep because I didn't know what it was that kept its eyes on me and trying to find me each time I hid. So I started to count down to keep my eyes open and not fall asleep. I wasn't that lucky. The next time I opened my eyes, I was him."
