 The thing about mortality was written by Marceline Reigns. You can find it on the SCP Wiki, and a link in the description below, and it is under a Creative Commons share-like attribution license. I've been having a lot of trouble sleeping. No, it's not memetic or even anomalous. It's something different, something worse than either of those. The problem is that I'm scared to break my stream of consciousness. Terrified, actually. And even that's putting it mildly. There's no way to find out where I go when I'm asleep, and sleep is just temporary. If we as a species can't even figure out what happens to our consciousness when we're sleeping, I'm way too scared to find out what happens when we die, because you don't wake up after that. There's been a little too much loss in my life. Friends, family, co-workers, loved ones, I'm sure you've had a similar experience, or maybe a few similar experiences, but I really hope you haven't. And I think about where they are right now every day, and if there even is a them to be somewhere in the first place. Every time I close my eyes at night, I keep thinking about that place beyond this one. I want there to be an afterlife, a heaven, a hell, limbo, nirvana, vahala, any of them will do. Or if there really is nothing waiting for us, then I want to know what's coming. More than anything in the world, I just want some damn confirmation. I guess this is really all started when my great-grandfather died. I was five, maybe six years old at the time, and I remember visiting him in the hospital every weekend just to check on him. We played cards, he should be a few magic tricks, did all the things that a great-grandpa's supposed to do for their grandkids. Then one day we stopped going. My mom told me that he'd passed in his sleep. I was sad, everybody would be sad. I understood that I couldn't see him anymore, and I knew that I missed him. But he was old, old people don't have that much time left, and it wasn't good, but at least made sense. My friend Shannon comforted me at school after his passing. She was a real help, and helped me process the grief that I didn't really know I was feeling at the time, and hanging out with her made me feel better, and that's all that really mattered. And after I'd finally started to move on from my great-grandfather's passing, I don't even know if move on is the right word for that, but Shannon and I started to talk more frequently. We sat next to each other in gym class making fun of the try-hards, doing her best to avoid getting yelled at by the gym teacher, and she started sitting next to me in class passing funny notes to me whenever our teacher wasn't looking. I went over to her house a few times, got to meet her family, who treated me like I was one of their own kids. All in all, it was a pretty sweet friendship, probably the first one I ever really had. When I heard that Shannon died, I was heartbroken. School ended one day, just like it had for years at that point. There wasn't anything special about it. We'd said our goodbyes, our see you later, and that was it. I went home. I complained about my homework. I played video games, and I went to bed, and like clockwork, I was expecting to see Shannon the next day. But her heart gave out in the driveway, practicing soccer with her dad, and she died on the spot. And I never saw her again. Ever since that day, I realized that eventually the same thing would happen to me. It didn't bother me for a while, but then I started worrying about her. Where did Shannon go when she died there on the pavement? Did she go to heaven, like my pastor had said? Was she somewhere else? Was she, was there even a her to be anywhere else anymore? It's horrifying. Kids aren't supposed to die, man, especially not like that. I just want to stop thinking about it, but I can't. I want to go back to a time when I wasn't aware of this bullshit. I want my friend back, and I, I don't want to die. I hate the thought that she's gone forever. I don't want to accept that, but it's the reality I'm in. The one where I have to live without her. The one where I got a chance to grow up, to have kids, go to prom, go to college. And she didn't get any of that. And I miss my friend. Partial transcript of Dr. Rain's 12th therapy session at site 83. Thank you for watching. If you enjoyed the video, hit the subscribe button and then hit the notification bell next to that so you're notified when I upload new videos. And then head on over to patreon.com forward slash decimarian and pledge at any level like everybody here on the screen already has, including Sinjeriki, who's pledged at $100. It is nice to know that I'm not alone out here, and I will see you all again on Tuesday. Promise.