Sickness

Fear is only two of many different ways we perceive it to be. True fear which you acknowledge as danger causes you to freeze, hide, or flee. Then there's irrational fear which is a phobia, but fear could also be a sickness for the people who think very differently than the "normal" way of thinking. Fear can cause damage to a person's brain and impair the memories, so their way of thinking is distorted.

But this is not about fear, this is about realization. I cannot call it fear nor being scared, I honestly have no clue what it is. All I can do is share my experience and let the reader decide for themselves how they would describe it.

People categorize sicknesses and diseases as a fear because some are dying. But does that really mean that they are scared? No, being on your death bed is like realizing the life in front of you that you had taken for granted for many years. Going through a sickness is not the definition of fear. Fear is a sudden moment. For example, if a gun was pointed at your head, what you feel there would be the definition of fear. While the feeling you have when sick is long-term.

I know this feeling because I was once on my death bed. It wasn't anything like cancer or a well-known sickness you read in the media or see on the news. It is actually a rare condition and most people do not know about it. I was 14 when I came down with it and when I went to the doctors for it, he had no words as well. He told my mother and I that this condition is rare for adults so he cannot explain why a 14-year-old had it. The name of this sickness is Pleurisy and even if it isn't really heard of, it is still a very terrible condition. Because I was so young, he did not want to take the risk of going through the procedure of getting it out. What it is, is liquid lining your lungs and it causes you to stop breathing. Not at first though, first it just hurts when you breathe and I don't mean just the ordinary pain you can get over, I mean it extremely hurts. The procedure would have been to put me to sleep and stick a suction tube down my throat to suck the liquid out, but it was risky for me. It wasn't too bad at the time and we also didnt have the insurance to cover it. So he prescribed me some pain killers to help with the pain and told us that it can get better on its own or it can get worse and if it gets worse I could die. Well it did get worse. We lived in a townhouse so we had a second story and that was my living area. I would have stayed downstairs but I was unable to lay down and the bed downstairs had no way for me to sit up. So I had to sleep in the bed upstairs and stack up pillows like a chair. As time went on I was unable to do anything. I could barely move because when I did it got harder to breathe. I couldn't eat or drink it hurt to swallow anything even if I did have to take a pain pill to help me. I barely ate anything the whole time and all it did was kept getting worse with each day til all I did was sleep. I sat in one spot the whole time not moving an inch and when I would wake up I would close my eyes again to go back to sleep thinking 'what if i don't wake up next time?'

This went on for two weeks and finally it got to the point where I woke up in the middle of the night and started to cry asking, hoping, and praying to die. Right then and there. That is all I wanted at that moment was to die, because the pain was so bad I couldn't live with it anymore. I could feel myself losing the way to breathe. I was waiting for my lungs to just finally close up. But after that day I don't know what happened, I started to get better. It took time to get better and I still hurt when I would do everyday activities like just walking, but at least I was getting better. Finally I beat it, the liquid stays with you until you get the procedure done but it is still rare for it to even come back. Every now and then I will feel a slight pain when I breathe that would feel like pleurisy, but it has not come back and I'm grateful for that.

After all of that happened I realized the reason I had got that sick. For about a year, I had been extremely depressed. I was a hermit I wanted nothing to do with the world and I hated my life. Depression can make you sick and I did get hit hard. Sickness and diseases are not just something you can see. Someone could look perfectly fine but that does not mean they are. This was one of my stories of fighting. Don't give up on yourself, even if you think no one needs you or you cant put anything into this world, you're wrong. When you start believing you are worthless that is when you see how much people actually need you. Sometimes it is too late for others, so don't get in your own head and make that mistake.