TW: war, violence, torture, death, racism
I remember I had a dream once where I wasn't under control of my body. It was like my mind went from full color to desaturation. It was hard to think, and my body would just do things on command. I couldn't love nor hate, I was numbed. Every time I would escape that feeling it would feel like a breathe of fresh air. I wonder if that sense of mindlessness was like hell.
Hell would be like dementia. You try over and over to remember when its ultimately pointless, and each moment you forget you loose a bit of hope that you will ever get better. Its like insanity, trying to find a different outcome. You go from an old soul enjoying the glory days to a human vegetable. Hell would be seeing all these strangers who love and care for you, call you "grandma" and "mom" but you could never know them, never love them, and you don't understand why they cry when you ask who they are or demand them to leave. Hell would be someone telling you that your wife just died and your first thought being 'I had a wife.' as a tear falls down your cheek. A deep numbness to the whole world would surround you, and you would loose all your humanity and everything that made you yourself. You have a confusion so thick you forget forgetting.
Hell would be like a numb soldier with shell shock, who has seen too many dead. They would forget what it would feel like to love or feel anything other than numbness to other people. They would feel shame in surviving after seeing their comrades die, and killing others themself. They would have to live with all the horrible secrets of the men they had killed and the towns they had wreaked havoc upon. And when they returned home, they would be lost in such a deep PTSD that they could never leave their most harrowing moments. That everytime they hear the word bomb they duck as if its an instinct, that they shake in nervousness even in their sleep, that they can't eat, that they can't get their minds in the present. You could still see the fear in their eyes, you can see that their soul died on those fields while their body is still alive.
Hell would be like solitary confinement. There is no rhythm, no human connection. Your brain leaves the confines of sanity and drifts off, there is nothing else but your thoughts. All those things you would've liked to have done are now but mere desires. If you do escape your hell, you never make it back out the same. I think of Albert Woodfox, who got put in solitary confinement for 43 years of his life over a murder he did not commit. He had his entire life stricken away, only to die 6 years later. He lived more of his life in isolation than out of it. That would certainly be hell.
Hell would be an active shooter in your house. You hear the screams of your siblings and family before heavy shots. You know they are dead. You know you are next, and its just a matter of time. There is no escape. You can't help but imagine their bloodied bodies on the floor. You wonder why you of all people were last out of all of them, even if you manage to escape by some miracle their screams are still in your head.
Hell would be racism. Everyone who dared to have darker skin subjagated in the name of purity. Your brothers and sisters are told that they are weaker for something outside of their control. The fear in your eyes when a white person walks by, when you know that they have all the power over you. When you're beat down, treated like second class citizens, forced to live in squaler the way your ancestors had for generations, and, you fear, the way your children and grandchildren would live as well. And yet this pain is still considered equal under the law.
Ultimately, there are many iterations in hell, and most are often experienced by living human beings. Just always realize that people are living their own hell around you every single day.
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