I wasn’t a normal kid.
When I was younger, I loved unusual media—obsessively, even. I purposely sought out the YouTube series everyone said were too disturbing, the games that came with age restrictions and content warnings, and the stories filled to the brim with violence, blood, and death.
The more uncomfortable it made the “normal” people,
the more curious I became to dive into its lore,
the more I stopped reacting to whatever was deemed disturbing.
As I grew older, death became real—present, prevalent, closer than I ever expected.
It’s strange.
How can someone be here one moment and gone the next?
How dare the world continue revolving as if nothing ever happened?
To cope, I kept trying to apply the same logic I used before: repeated exposure. If I convinced myself I was still just as brave as I had been, maybe I could learn to suck it up the same way I dealt with horror. After all, repetition should make it easier, right?
No. It doesn’t.
If anything, it feels like I’ve been exposed too suddenly, too quickly, with no breaks allowed, no time to process what happened, no time to adjust at all. I often feel like death is trailing me. Sometimes, I wonder if I am some kind of misfortune.
I try to stay awake until the sun rises because the night no longer feels neutral. When I close my eyes, my mind doesn’t rest—I can’t bring myself to dream without seeing renditions of real-life horror.
I could handle Mari falling down the stairs.
I could handle animatronics screaming right in my face.
I could handle Fran Bow navigating that creepy asylum.
I could handle the grotesque nature of Mouthwashing.
Name it—I could handle it.
But this—
I don’t know how.
I don’t think I ever will.
