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the wallflowers//one headlight |
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I used to lie very uncomfortably in bed as a child, no more that 8 years old, forcing myself to stay on my right side, the side not facing the wall. It's always been natural for me to sleep on my left side, but for years I would give up being comfortable in order to survive the night. I slept on top bunk, waiting for the day I would open my eyes, pull the covers from over my head, and be at exactly eye level with the cause of my death. I would be ready for it, I would know my time had come, I would not be taken by surprise.
It would reach to what felt like 100 degrees under my blanket, sometimes making it very difficult to breathe, but I wouldn't allow myself to become vulnerable. I used to lie there, on my right side, listening to the house 'settle' as my mom explained it, taking every creak and moaning floorboard as a warning that something was slowly, quietly, making its way up the stairs, heading for my bedroom, on the right, hoping to find me sleeping comfortably. Usually it was Freddy Krueger, trailing his long steel nails along side the wall, as the house settled under the weight of his dirty boots.
I can't remember when I learned to fear the night. I remember many nights on the top bunk, with my feet dangling over the edge, singing little mermaid songs in a child’s attempt to soothe my crying sisters on the bottom bunk. We didn’t have a dog in the house, and yet my two younger sisters would cry themselves to an exhausted, not to mention dehydrated, sleep every night, absolutely terrified they were going to be attacked by dogs.
So there I was, a crusader in the night, slaying nightmares and hysterics with my little mermaid songs. Somewhere along the line, my voice was no longer needed, my sisters grew out of being terrified of dogs. Perhaps they grew to fear something even more terrible than being mauled by Cujo, something their imagination pieced together, something that couldn’t hurt you unless it knew where you were, unless it heard you crying. So they hushed up underneath their covers.
I put a rest to being a hero in the night and hushed up underneath my covers too. Perhaps the quiet of the dark is what got to me. I became aware of the unexplainable noises the house made while everyone was sleeping. While my imagination ran wild, my fears grew larger, making the darkest shadows even darker still. I realized I was alone in this. My parents slept downstairs, as far away from me as another planet, way too far away to hear any terrified sobs.
I didn’t have anyone to fill my head with little mermaid songs.
So I took to waiting in fear underneath my little mermaid blankets as Freddy toyed with my nightmares, scraping his sharp knives up the walls of the stairway. When I finally grasped that Freddy was only part of a movie, and movies were make believe, and that the chances of him killing me in my dreams where probably only about 35 percent, my fears turned to other nightmares I had never before seen. I was now afraid that any showing part of my body would be cut off by some unseen hand holding a machete. Any part of me dangling off the bed wasn’t safe and was fair game to be removed precisely. I made sure to sleep closer to the wall, and the temperature under the covers rose to 150 degrees as I sealed off any openings. I took that fear with me to new bedrooms, in new houses with new shadows playing different games on the ceilings.
Growing older, I began to gamble with fear. I held my head high in the dark, walking the long hall to my parents bedroom when I had a sudden fever. With cheap bravery, I told myself what nonsense it was to be afraid of the dark. I'd grow dizzy and sweaty in a slight panic, practically sprinting the last few feet and somersaulting into my parents bedroom.
However many times I win the toss-up, the fear of that slight chance will forever be an echo bouncing off my ears. There will always be a shadow too dark, a silence to deafening, and an uncertainty that needs to be neutralized before I let myself become vulnerable. It's a childish adult fear that can be controlled with obsessive-compulsive like rituals.
As a twenty-three year old, I still check behind doors every night and sleep with the closet door tightly shut. I sleep with a fan on, or subject myself to a sleepless night, rigid over any tiny noise. Ignorance is bliss, until its strangling you with the lamp cord on the bedside table!
Perhaps I keep these fears as a distraction. If I focus on the acts of violence and crime that are being shoved in my face constantly, I fog out what really blackens the walls, and lurks behind me, hiding in my hair, in my blood, in my cells, in your cells, and that is the uncertainty of what is predetermined.
Nothing is certain until its happened, and yet everything has already happened. I've already completed this entry and posted it, infinitely.
There are no OCD rituals to perform to avoid the predetermined.
Its unfair to be unaware until its too late to do anything. It's tragic that I could go to bed and just never wake up, infinitely, even after checking behind the bedroom door, closing the closet, sleeping on my right side, turning the lights on and off in multiples of three, or doing whatever it is that makes me feel safe.
There’s an exact time. A chain reaction that’s been hitting its mark right on cue since before I was born, and it will catch up to me. Events are lined up like dominos, with the last bone my last breath. I suppose that should teach me to live like I can make no mistakes, and not to be held back.
Perhaps I’m just simply afraid to live. Have I taken to wearing a leather glove with metal shears fashioned to it just to avoid facing uncertainty or is this whole entry just an elaborately disguised compulsion?
"Tiger got to hunt,
Bird got to fly,
Man got to sit and wonder, 'Why, why, why?'
Tiger got to sleep,
Bird got to land;
Man got to tell himself he understand."
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crappy
scared
anxious
jealous
sleepy
disappointed
cold
annoyed
depressed