New old post

August 2011


"It hasn't plagued me for years. I've been able to walk around the house in the dark numerous times with a feeling of complete safety. But one over active imagination mixed with one scary movie preview, not movie, but preview and I am once again reminded of why I refuse to watch or read anything scary. I simply cannot handle it.

A familiar fear came into my imagination as I walked down our pitch black hall at 2am. The randomized creaks of the house, the sound my own feet were producing and their echo within the enclosed walkway. I began the normal process of talking bravery into my near crazed mind, "...breathe....breathe....there is nothing to fear. You're fine. It's okay. There is nothing to get spooked about. All it is is dark. And so what if the worst should happen? So what? What if, when you turn on that light, there is a figure there reflected in the mirror that isn't yours? In all the years of talking down this paranoia never has it come to reality...so why do you treat it like it is? Just calm down. You're okay. Huh, why is the fan on in the bathroom but the light off? Perhaps someone forgot to turn it off. Oh come on self just turn on the light and stop being such a baby."
On the light came and off my heart went. There, at the end of the wall was a figure hunched over. My blood stopped entirely and fear gripped my lungs like death, leaving the feeling of ice at my finger tips as they stayed the light switch. Oh dear circulation, how your silence nearly kills me at times!
If ever my mind is abused with disheartening thoughts, discrouragements and distractions, for some reason the essence of fear and surviving it acts like an AED on my heart and kicks it back into a normal rhythm. No sooner did my system get shocked with that wave when it came back to life with full force of relief and near hysterical glee.
It was mother. She had wondered from her room and seeing that dad and I occupied the other two bathrooms had sought out the third to use and, as is normal for someone blinded by sleep, did not turn on the light. What a horror for me though to see her hunched over on the toilet with a bloodied eye (it had a broken blood vessel). Her punishment was that she had to stay and wait for me to dispell my near horror story to her. This was more to convince myself that she was real and not a ghost or demon of some kind. Oh bless me! I showered with my eyes completely open, despite the running shampoo and soap, and turned on every light I walked past on the way to my room. Thanks a lot, mom! But as the illustration stated, it shocked me back into a normal rythm. Despite discouragement, stress, spiritual warfare, loneliness and worry I fell asleep laughing that night and laughed all through the next day. The odds of mom playing an involuntary prank on me when that idea of a figure in the dark hadn't bothered me for years was just too ironic. Especially with her half crazed eye.
Turns out I wasn't the only victim that day from her involuntary attacks. She had facebook messaged her gay hair dresser, complimenting him on the job he did with her hair and was asking for more advice on hair styles with chop sticks. Seems innocent enough. Until she realized that she was signed in as my brother.

For those of you who don't know, this his current profile picture with our cousin
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