The end days

Dear Diary: 22 Feb 3039

Today again I woke up with a heavy feeling in my heart. As if someone was trying to squeeze it from inside and it was swelling in response. I was too tired to get up so I went back to sleep. The sun had just started to show its rays from above the mountains. But two hours later, it was too bright and too noisy to stay asleep, so I had to get up and wish everyone a pleasant morning.

It's been eight years since the outbreak of this disease but most of us still pretend we can outrun it or simply that it doesn’t exist at all. But deep down, they know it’s out there, gradually ending civilization. Ever since this disease started to affect my brain, around three months ago, my memory has started to fade. The past, the family, and all the memories that make life worth living. Sometimes I feel they know I’m sick but don’t want to accept it. Maybe they fear if they acknowledge it, it will become real. I have the same fear. That’s why I haven’t told anyone outright. What will they even do? There is no cure. One day you have a dream and this virus seeps through your head to the nervous system and then the entire body. Slowly making one miserable unto death. People call that dream a terror vision even though it is not scary. It is just like a normal dream but the next day you start to feel you are alone when inside of you feels full of strangers that won’t leave. Outside, the voices start to lower and inside voices turn up. It can take weeks and sometimes months to become aware of the infection.

I can feel it in my brain and heart, sometimes in my limbs too and I know there is no going back. It is going to win. It always does. But what I’m afraid of is not death. It’s the fact of mortality but how worse will it get before I get to rest? And what happens after I die? Is it like deep sleep or do we get to dream? Or do heaven and hell actually exist and I am on list up there? If we do cease to exist the mystery of all it scares me. I try to distract myself, by watching my favourite cartoon shows that I used to as a child. So, when I fall into eternal sleep and there are dreams, they are fun and happy. I know it’s weird for a 17-year-old to watch cartoons and I don’t blame my family for judging me but I wish they understood why I do it. I wish they saw I’m ill because I don’t have the energy to tell them. It can’t be that difficult, I can see it when I look in the mirror.

Other than that, today was alright. I did not cry at all. I guess I am starting to accept my fate. If this is how it ends, it will. Raima, my only friend left in town came to visit. She talked about this new college she is starting and the new clothes she bought last week and all I thought about was when I see her next. Sometimes I feel she is suffering from dream virus too but I feel that about everyone. I noticed the spark in her eyes so maybe she is fine so far.

Well, I am trying my best to keep the outside voices louder than the inside clutter so my sanity stays with me longer.

Dear Diary: 15 Mar 3039

Did you know nightmares can affect your real life? They do. More than I ever deemed them worthy. Sometimes they feel more real than real life and we spend our entire day fearing it. Sleep has been difficult for the past month. I stayed awake half of the night wondering if they would come up with a cure before it was my time to go. I know the cure will never come, not for the next twenty years at least. My brain is eating itself from within and I am starting to feel more detached from reality than ever. The time is coming closer, I can feel it. I did not recognize my father yesterday and he and my mother cried a lot. I told them to not worry as I still had time. They fell for my lies. We had a normal few days until last night. It was a scary dream. I haven’t had one of those in a while. I saw giant people and I was the smallest among them. I was yelling but they could not hear me. This is what I feel in real life too, invisible and unheard. My friend said it wasn’t that scary. If it was scary, I’d have woken up screaming like they show on television. Maybe he is right but he wasn’t there too. I was and I was scared.

The time is passing too fast and too slow at the same time. I’m waiting for these grim days to end and at the same time fear, what if they do? I wonder what my last day would be like. How much sanity will I have left by then? Will I remember some of my family or friends or will they be erased from my memory forever? I am scared, not of my deteriorating mental stability but that people will see me differently. Those who haven’t suffered from this virus have the privilege of not knowing what it feels like. Going by the day, not knowing where. Waking up every morning, more and more alienated from myself.

I wish to lie in the sun for one last time. I always enjoyed sleeping in the shade while the sun shone bright and in my dreams, my desires were fulfilled. Maybe I will do it tomorrow. Every day is like walking on thin ice. It can break and I would be deep under the water, frozen to death. I want you to know, my dearest diary, that even though I hardly wrote to you or gave you any attention while you lay in my cupboard, I am thankful to you for being by my side. I don’t know if this is my last conversation with you so, I want to end it by admitting, as my heart becomes heavier and heavier, my brain turns numb, I had the life many dream of but got too weary trying to make most of everything I got that I stopped looking for everything more I wished for.