Opening the Gates of Hell

As a child, I've always been fascinated by ghosts and mysteries. Unsolved Mysteries and Sightings were my two favorite shows. A lot of my old childhood drawings involved ghosts and abandoned castles. I never thought that it was strange thing until I started thinking about it recently. I don't know how I got interested with ghosts. I think it started when I woke up in the middle of the night and I walked outside into the living room. My dad was watching a horror movie, so I peaked at the television screen. The image there really scared me.. and I couldn't sleep that night. Although I was scared to death by it... I was also strangely fascinated...

I remember in 2nd grade, my two best friends and I scared ourselves to death with tales of "Bloody Mary." The belief was that if we went into the restroom and looked in the mirror while chanting "Bloody Mary" over and over... a bloody woman would come out of the mirror and do horrible things to us. We always dared each other to do it, and we would take turns pushing the other into the restroom. Every time I used the restroom, I imagined Bloody Mary would come out and grab me. I would always run out in a frightened hurry. It was a fun time.

There was another story during 2nd grade that I heard that was called "The Gateway to Hell." It involved pulling out this weird chain that was stuck to the wall. My friend told me that if someone ever pulled out the chain, the hole beneath them would open up and swallow them into hell. I remember I spent a big part of my childhood obsessed with pulling that chain. During recess, I would tug at that chain with all my might. I didn't have a death wish or anything...I really didn't want to go to hell. I was just really curious to see what would happen. I always knew in the back of my mind that I would never be able to pull off that chain.. It was that sense of curiosity that kept me pulling everyday. I recently went back to my old school, and I noticed the chain was still there, unmoved... untouched.

I was always a curious kid I guess. I wanted to know the answer to everything. The fact that something was unsolved or unexplained appealed to me so much that I spent most of my time daydreaming about what the answers to those questions were. The mystery of the extinction of dinosaurs and far away planets also really fascinated me as well. Pretty much anything that was unexplained, I wanted to figure out. I read tons of books on those subjects, but they never gave me the answer I wanted. I wanted more. With ghosts, I wanted to actually be there.. to see the ghost.. to feel the amount of fear in the environment..  I ended up developing my own theories from the things I read.

My parents never really minded too much about my interest in ghosts. I always had a book about the paranormal in my hands and I would tell them about all the places I wanted to investigate. Growing up though, I started becoming a lot more skeptical about things. Towards the beginning of high school, my interests in ghosts began to wane and I started becoming more interested in computers and the internet.. not to mention girls. Through it all though, there was always something deep inside me that was fascinated with the unexplained.

I guess I still see myself like I was in 2nd grade. In many ways, I'm still a curious kid pulling at a heavy chain. However, I'm a lot older. What if I were able to pull out that chain now? Would the gates of hell swallow me up? Or would nothing happen.. with me just ending up with a broken chain in my hands?

Sometimes I think the fun lies in not knowing what would happen. I find that as long as there's a mystery in my life, I'll always have the motivation to keep searching for the answer. Of course it gets frustrating when you never find that answers you're looking for. Maybe one day though. Definitely one day.

Tiiiired...

What a tiring day. It involved a lot of waiting around... To start off, I was actually back at home since Monday night instead of at my apartment because I had an appointment with two ophthalmologists. The appointment was supposed to start at 9:30, but it actually started around 10:00. My eyes were first dilated, which took longer than the doctors thought it would take. After that, I had an "FA," which stood for something I can't remember. Basically, it was a series of photographs taken of my eyes which would be analyzed to see what the main problem was. My doctor was a little eccentric. He came into the room jokingly complaining about how he wanted a vacation. "Even at the first day of work, I wanted a vacation." He laughed as he said this. He then turned on some classical music and proceeded to work.

The first 30 pictures or so were taken normally.. It was the typical "Look at this point here... (SNAP!) Open your eyes wider... (SNAP!)." The second half of the photos involved shooting a syringe filled with a red medical dye into my blood. The dye would then travel up into my eyes and pretty much illuminate the nerve vessels that were leaking. The whole process took about 20 seconds to occur. It was a nauseating feeling. I could see and feel the red dye flooding into my eyes. Soon after that, everything I saw was painted red. Oh yes, one interesting side effect of this drug is that my urine would turn neon green. >_> The whole FA took about 40 minutes.

The worst part of the day was waiting for the photos to be analyzed. I sat in the waiting room for nearly an hour and thirty minutes. When the doctor who analyzed the photos finally called me, it was around 12:30. The good news was that I didn't need laser surgery. However, the bad news is that there is still a potential for my eyes to get worse if I am not careful. There were faint traces of fat and blood scattered throughout my eyes due to ruptured blood cells. The doctor warned me.. there is no chance of repairing my eyesight if these traces were to hit a critical area.

I feel like a kid as I write this. It was a totally new, surreal experience for me. My eyes were examined really thoroughly that they still feel tired up to now.

That wasn't the end of my day though. After that, my parents needed to go to the bank to transfer some property under my name. It'd be really hard to explain everything, so I won't go into the details. I just wanted to say that I had to wait at the bank for about 3 hours. Oh yeah, I also now own a house....

I'm heading back to school tomorrow morning at 7:30. I can't find it in myself to drive all the way back to school tonight. Tomorrow's going to be a tiring day... so I'm slightly dreading it. Tests.. papers.. and projects.. ugh. I guess can understand how my doctor feels. I also want a vacation.. but I know I won't get one for a really long time...