I drove to IUP today, and to get there, I have to drive on this back remote road.  There isn't much back there, just a few houses and tons of fields and woods.  The first time I drove home at night from IUP, I had an awful experience on that road-it was pitch black, the only light coming from my headlights, and I can't explain very well what happened, becaues I can't remember.  I remember sobbing, and seeing something's shape in my rearview mirror sitting in the backseat, and looking at my phone and seeing "no service", but most of all I remember the terrible feeling that came over me-it was disgust and terror and death all rolled together inside of me.  It was awful.  So I was nervous about driving to IUP again, even though I was leaving during the day this time to go there.

I was fine until I got to the turn off and made a right on to the road.  It was like entering another world.  There was no other traffic-there wasn't the last time, either.  It was light so I could see my surroundings, but that didn't help any at all.  I was seeing things one at a time, like a slide show...the creek, the burned down farm house, the woods, the road-and I had this awful feeling inside of me.  Pictures were flashing through my head....stumbling through woods with something holding my hands together, feet (mine?) in a creek, red, lots of red, a house with a window from floor to ceiling, a huge field.  Every time I tried to focus on the pictures in my head, my brain slammed a wall down and I couldn't see them anymore.  I was shaking and nauseous, and I kept thinking "something bad is here" over and over and over.  I would see a house and sort of moan and think "it's bad, there's something bad"....and then the road comes out into a more residential area, and it was like coming through to the other side of something-it was immediate.  I wasn't nauseous anymore, the chanting in my head (bad here something bad here) stopped, and I could see things the way you're supposed to see things, all at once.  I don't understand why it happens there.  Obviously it reminds me of something terrible but what?  And why only there?  Is it similar to somewhere I've been?  I have no idea and I've been driving myself insane trying to figure it out. 

I ended up staying later than I meant to at IUP because we went to a movie, and when we came out it was dark and my heart just sank.  I knew I'd be going down that road again.  I prepared myself-I locked all the doors about eight thousand times and looked in the backseat, made myself see that there is nothing and no one there, put Sugarland on....but still, it was the same thing.  As soon as I came around the curve where the houses close together stop and nothingness begins, the pictures and shaking and sick to my stomach feeling came right back.  I don't know what to think.  I DO know that I have to find a different route.  There has to be a different one.  I think it gets worse every time. 

I'm still having awful nights.  The nightmares last night were crazy, dark, terrifying...I can only remember flashes but the flashes I remember is enough.  I don't want to remember more.  I'm exhausted and my head hurts and I'm afraid to go to sleep again because it'll be more of the same.  I just want to be fixed.  I don't know if I can be.  Some things are beyond fixing, I think.