dread

For most of my life I've been a listener. At least in the beginning, I think the reason I listened so intently was to have a chance of hearing the train before it ran over me.

Even greater than my fear that l was crazy, was my lifelong dread that someone would find out.

Imagine experiencing pervasive and perpetual sensations of dread and shame, the sort of visceral response that you might have when your body reacts to a physical threat. Envision how distressing it would be if you experienced these exact same feelings after viewing yourself in a reflective surface or a photograph. Imagine what it might be like if your body was the source of extreme feelings of anger, disgust, anxiety, fear, and hopelessness. Try to visualize how it might be if viewing your outward appearance triggered a reaction usually associated with a perilous situation, and how disconcerting it would be if every time you looked at yourself you experienced primal feelings of terror. If you have not had such an experience, it is probably quite difficult to comprehend how it is possible to have such a reaction to one's own body. This, though, is the very tormenting reality for individuals who suffer from body dysmorphic disorder (BDD).

Her laughter was an upbeat song set to a minor key.

For him, behind every feeling and thought was the sense of the open door leading into nothingness. To be sure, he suffered from dread of many things, of madness, the police, insomnia, and also dread of death. But everything he dreaded he likewise desired and longed for at the same time. He was full of burning curiosity about suffering, destruction, persecution, madness and death.

Danger will come upon us when it will. We can't stop it. We can only try to be prepared. There's no point in looking ahead to that danger and suffering its effects even before it comes to us.

The things that kept them awake in the middle of the night, the things they did underneath the cover of darkness, both dreadful and beautiful, both attractive and repulsive, were revealed in stark clarity to their minds. A harsh reality that intensified sensations with each gust of wind. They shrank from it with frightened whimpers. The setting in each house would have fit perfectly into a post-apocalyptic tale of nuclear holocausts. Shell-shocked expressions gazed into the nothingness. Blankets over faces, silent prayers to the heavens. No curious eyes at the windows, or storm watchers dared to partake. The mere thought of looking out was too much to be borne.

I was starting to hate my sixteenth birthday. A poufy white dress and a cake with roses made out of pink icing and awkward dancing with boys in awkward suits was starting to sound like a great alternative. Seriously. Sign my up, I wouldn't even complain.

I felt despair. The word__ overused and banalified now, despair, but it__ a serious word, and I__ using it seriously. For me it denotes a simple admixture _ a weird yearning for death combined with a crushing sense of my own smallness and futility that presents as a fear of death. It__ maybe close to what people call dread or angst. But it__ not these things, quite. It__ more like wanting to die in order to escape the unbearable feeling of becoming aware that I__ small and weak and selfish and going without any doubt at all to die. It__ wanting to jump overboard.

Shadows fell on them like predators as the light went out.

Some dark Presence watching by my bed,The awful image of a nameless dread _

It was a myth you couldn't function on opiates: shooting up was one thing but for someone like me-jumping at pigeons beating from the sidewalk, afflicted with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder practically to the point of spasticity and cerebral palsy-pills were the key to being not only competent, but high-functioning.

In your dread of dictators you established a state of society in which every ward boss is a dictator, every financier a dictator, every private employer a dictator, all with the livelihood of the workers at their mercy, and no public responsibility. And to symbolize this state of things, this defeat of all government, you have set up in New York Harbour a monstrous idol which you call Liberty. The only thing that remains to complete this monument is to put on its pedestal the inscription written by Dante on the gate of Hell __ll hope abandon, ye who enter here.

Liberty means responsibility. That is why most men dread it.

The only time "early bloomer" has ever been applied to me is vis-a-vis my premature apprehension of the deep dread-of-existence thing. In all other cases, I plod and tromp along. My knuckles? Well dragged.

A finger beckons.My choice is to turn away.It is a mistake.

At twenty-four she imagined with dread that she was growing old.

Now hollow fires burn out to black,And lights are fluttering low:Square your shoulders, lift your packAnd leave your friends and go.O never fear, lads, naught__ to dread,Look not left nor right: In all the endless road you treadThere__ nothing but the night.