My mind is a battlefield

It has trouble distinguishing danger from safety

It makes rain on a tin roof sound like gun fire

Makes fireworks on the Fourth of July into an air raid

Makes every cloud of smoke in the distance  into the scene of a battle,

Into ground zero,

Into a crater where life once existed,

Into a loved ones house burning to dust,

My brain is a sick and twisted trickster.

I am it’s prey.

I am the fool caught in the web my brain has spun for me.

Every car ride feels like my last

Every plane ride feels like a hostage situation.

Every time it rains I get ready for the lightning.

Because “that’s just my luck” and when my motto has become “I’m not surprised, just disappointed” it’s because every worse case scenario has already been played out in my head over and over and over again until sometimes I’m too scared to move. 

I see roller coasters flying off the rails and catching on fire

I see sharks in EVERY body of water

I see bacteria, parasites, and viruses on every food and drink that I consume and one day maybe they will win.

I see disaster in every room and I never enter a building without an escape plan, this is my brain. He is an expert escape artist. He is the master of deception. I am his captive audience, nervously laughing to pretend this isn’t really happening, but it is.

But you never know?

Maybe someday the planes flying by will be coming to cause death and destruction.

Maybe someday that car that sounded a little too slow is an active shooter in a drive by.

Maybe someday that wind that seems a little too fast will be a tornado

Or that twig that snapped will be a blood thirsty grizzly bear and I will be ready.

While you were busy living your life like a normal individual, I have been training for this moment. I will be gone faster than you can say mortality. I will have escaped faster than you can say momenti mori, I will have found safety at whatever cost, even you. I’d like to say I would save you too or that I would save you first, but my brain is as selfish as a child. Self-preservation comes before any other emotion or thought. You will be surprised, you might even be confused, but understand that I have been well prepared for this exact scenario since the day I was born and when the shit hits the fan, I’ll be ready.