how do you move on?
How do you move on, after realizing that you may very well die because your brain has caught fire inside your skull?
I'm serious.
Lately, through some great misfortunes, I've managed to catch bits and pieces of those "it could happen tomorrow" type disaster shows. These scenarios always have and still do scare the shit out of me.
Asteroids I can deal with, really...they're hit and miss, and there's no relatively large ones in the area until 2029. Car accidents you have some imput in, so that doesn't concern me as much as it probably should. I'd decided long ago that I will not move somewhere near the ocean, nor on a major faultline, or a place with hurricane potential. I also will not live at the base of a volcano, nor at the bottom or tip-top of a mountain that may give way with too much rain. I unplug everything after I use it to reduce my risk of fire. I don't fly. I'm actually not scared of tornados anymore, which is a huge improvement on my part. I've taken Tae Kwon Do, and plan on taking it up again soon, maybe in Omaha. I will not try to play mother teresa by going to live in a high-risk area. And I tell my parents I love them before I go to bed every night, just in case.
I've had enough shit happen to me already that I try to natural disaster-proof and insane killer-proof my life as much as possible. Which up until this point, has been kinda easy. At least, I'm taking steps to minimize my risk.
But then I had to go watch the Nightline disaster show tonight. Before tonight, the Yellowstone Caldera (a supervolcano under Yellowstone Park) was just a running gag in a Chicago news column (QT-Quick Takes). It explodes every 600,000 years, it's been 630,000 years since it last erupted, the eruptions of which are huge enough to send a layer of ash over 6 feet deep as far away as Chicago. The approach they took to it was funny.
So that was all pretty easy to brush off, until they started to actually talk about the impact of this. The lava could be as wide as 100 miles over Wyoming and South Dakota, they said about an area of all of Great Britain or Connecticut. Ash isn't like snow, it has sulferic gas with it. It's heavier, and can collapse buildings and stop cars from running. The ash would spread all over the world, dropping temperatures, this gas in the air. The United States would be crippled, because the roads would be blocked, no cars would be able to move, no trains, no way to get food to people. People outside would suffocate from the ash, and people inside would be buried when their houses collapse. In minutes. And there are no known warning signs, since no one was around to record them the last time it erupted. So it could happen 100 years from now, or 1 second from now. And it will happen too fast to evacuate, too fast to outdrive.
Autopsies of bodies found in Pompeii showed that when that volcano erupted, it was so hot their brains literally caught fire inside their heads.
It always takes me a few days after such a show to work through my anxiety about it and forget it, but this has effected me harder than anything else, because there's absolutely nothing I can do except hope and beg the fates that this will not happen until after I die. Even moving to a different country wouldn't really help much, since the ash will be in the atmosphere and in all the water supplies.
My greatest fear is going to my death in fear or panic.
So I'm asking, how do you move on? How do you go back to your daily life, worrying about whether your shoes match your dress or if Tom will ever marry Katie when there's this burning mass that we should be trying to do something with? Knowing that in the next minute, could send you gasping for air into your basement while your roof collapses on top of your head? Something that could cause rioting, looting, starvation, without ANY warning? Maybe not even an earthquake or a red tv screen or flags on the beach. The government should be syphoning it out to relieve pressure, cutting a hole in the ground, building a dome, something, anything. But they're doing nothing, just sending teenagers over to Iraqi to die and worrying about the gas supply.
I can't tell myself it won't happen to me, because I always told myself cancer wouldn't happen to me and it did. Saying it won't happen, is, for me, precisely the way to get it to happen. My parents seem to brush it off, everyone seems to brush it off. But I *can't*, my entire world gets tainted for days after something like this. Even if I do something fun or distracting, it's still there.
So how do you get something like this off your mind?
And I apologise if I've disturbed you as much as I've been disturbed. I just needed to get this out, and making it private doesn't do me any good because then I can't get feedback.
I'm serious.
Lately, through some great misfortunes, I've managed to catch bits and pieces of those "it could happen tomorrow" type disaster shows. These scenarios always have and still do scare the shit out of me.
Asteroids I can deal with, really...they're hit and miss, and there's no relatively large ones in the area until 2029. Car accidents you have some imput in, so that doesn't concern me as much as it probably should. I'd decided long ago that I will not move somewhere near the ocean, nor on a major faultline, or a place with hurricane potential. I also will not live at the base of a volcano, nor at the bottom or tip-top of a mountain that may give way with too much rain. I unplug everything after I use it to reduce my risk of fire. I don't fly. I'm actually not scared of tornados anymore, which is a huge improvement on my part. I've taken Tae Kwon Do, and plan on taking it up again soon, maybe in Omaha. I will not try to play mother teresa by going to live in a high-risk area. And I tell my parents I love them before I go to bed every night, just in case.
I've had enough shit happen to me already that I try to natural disaster-proof and insane killer-proof my life as much as possible. Which up until this point, has been kinda easy. At least, I'm taking steps to minimize my risk.
But then I had to go watch the Nightline disaster show tonight. Before tonight, the Yellowstone Caldera (a supervolcano under Yellowstone Park) was just a running gag in a Chicago news column (QT-Quick Takes). It explodes every 600,000 years, it's been 630,000 years since it last erupted, the eruptions of which are huge enough to send a layer of ash over 6 feet deep as far away as Chicago. The approach they took to it was funny.
So that was all pretty easy to brush off, until they started to actually talk about the impact of this. The lava could be as wide as 100 miles over Wyoming and South Dakota, they said about an area of all of Great Britain or Connecticut. Ash isn't like snow, it has sulferic gas with it. It's heavier, and can collapse buildings and stop cars from running. The ash would spread all over the world, dropping temperatures, this gas in the air. The United States would be crippled, because the roads would be blocked, no cars would be able to move, no trains, no way to get food to people. People outside would suffocate from the ash, and people inside would be buried when their houses collapse. In minutes. And there are no known warning signs, since no one was around to record them the last time it erupted. So it could happen 100 years from now, or 1 second from now. And it will happen too fast to evacuate, too fast to outdrive.
Autopsies of bodies found in Pompeii showed that when that volcano erupted, it was so hot their brains literally caught fire inside their heads.
It always takes me a few days after such a show to work through my anxiety about it and forget it, but this has effected me harder than anything else, because there's absolutely nothing I can do except hope and beg the fates that this will not happen until after I die. Even moving to a different country wouldn't really help much, since the ash will be in the atmosphere and in all the water supplies.
My greatest fear is going to my death in fear or panic.
So I'm asking, how do you move on? How do you go back to your daily life, worrying about whether your shoes match your dress or if Tom will ever marry Katie when there's this burning mass that we should be trying to do something with? Knowing that in the next minute, could send you gasping for air into your basement while your roof collapses on top of your head? Something that could cause rioting, looting, starvation, without ANY warning? Maybe not even an earthquake or a red tv screen or flags on the beach. The government should be syphoning it out to relieve pressure, cutting a hole in the ground, building a dome, something, anything. But they're doing nothing, just sending teenagers over to Iraqi to die and worrying about the gas supply.
I can't tell myself it won't happen to me, because I always told myself cancer wouldn't happen to me and it did. Saying it won't happen, is, for me, precisely the way to get it to happen. My parents seem to brush it off, everyone seems to brush it off. But I *can't*, my entire world gets tainted for days after something like this. Even if I do something fun or distracting, it's still there.
So how do you get something like this off your mind?
And I apologise if I've disturbed you as much as I've been disturbed. I just needed to get this out, and making it private doesn't do me any good because then I can't get feedback.