Kate Gompert on the psych ward — "I fear this feeling more than…"
‘I fear this feeling more than I fear anything, man. More than pain, or my mom dying, or environmental toxicity. Anything.’ […] ‘What I told Dr. Garton is OK but imagine if you felt that way all over, inside. All through you. Like every cell and every atom or brain-cell or whatever was so nauseous it wanted to throw up, but it couldn’t, and you felt that way all the time, and you’re sure, you’re positive the feeling will never go away, you’re going to spend the rest of your natural life feeling like this.’
Context
Her gamble at making the feeling communicable: the fear-ranking (It above death, above her mother's death), then the nausea analogy — sick-to-your- stomach scaled up to every cell, permanent. The essay at scene 135 upgrades exactly this analogy; the doctor writes down "something much too brief to correspond directly to what she'd said."