Death Letters, Part Two: Fear Itself

Dear reader,
Merry Samhain and Happy Halloween. This is one of my favorite days of the year and it always makes me contemplate fear. I had a lot of it growing up as a child - the fear of strangers, fear of the ocean, fear of the dark, and (my most paralyzing and panic-inducing) the fear of being lost. Later on, after early childhood, it evolved. The fear of the dark and the ocean stayed but in place of the others, there were new fears: the fear of fire, fear of clowns, and an acute fear of ghosts and demons (and other things unseen that my paranoia exaggerated).

After a particular traumatizing series of events including physical abuse, self harm, suicide attempts, side effects of medication (that gave me mood swings, disconnection with reality, memory gaps, sleepwalking episodes, and horrifying nightmares that blurred with reality often), I decided that it was better to be feared than be afraid.

To keep from being afraid, I knew I would have to learn to become fear itself. When you are the dark, you will no longer succumb to the terror of what it holds...

Athazagoraphobia: The Lonely Child
Growing up, I was left on my own a lot. Not in a neglectful sense (at first) where a parent might leave a child all alone at home, but in the sense that I was left to my own devices. My father was always out to sea with the Navy (and when he came back, he was neglectful), my brother wanted nothing to do with me when he wasn't in school (unless it was to bully or torture me mentally), and my mother (suffering from cancer unbeknownst to us) had a hard time keeping up day to day. She did her best, but since I was always such a quiet and introverted child, she usually left me on my own to do workbooks or play or read. Naturally, this left me with a fear of being left behind by my family, forgotten and lost. I was always quite clingy in public because I was sure that my family didn't care about me. If they went too long without looking at me, they would forget that I existed and would simply leave me behind forever.

"...[T]he fear of being forgotten can arise in childhood if the individual has been left alone or has been ignored for a long time. Many sufferers of this phobia report feeling 'inconsequential or unsubstantial' due to the feelings they undergo when left alone.

[...]

Often, such people are inherently introverted, depressed or tend to lack the ability to interact normally in society. They are, by nature, shy and passive. At the same time, it is difficult for the person as s/he undergoes deep turmoil thinking repeatedly of 'simply fading into oblivion'." FearOf.net

This fear may have persisted if not for witnessing my brother grow into a more and more troublesome person. Once my parents divorced, my father cut himself out of our lives, and all of my mother's energy and attention went into my brother. He was rather difficult - violent, verbally abusive, occasionally disappearing for days at a time to various friends' houses without warning; more than once he was on missing posters because of this. I was pushed to the side yet again, this time neglected and regarded with impatience and anger (due to the tempers my brother left in his wake); I would often go without eating a meal or two because no one was paying attention. Sometimes whole days passed where my family never spoke to me or looked at me, busy yelling at each other and escalating occasionally to violence. I was singled out in school because I was brilliant and gifted, but didn't speak much. Often I would get flustered at the sudden attention or doubtful of myself even if I was right, so I would answer incorrectly. This led to ridicule by teachers and classmates in varying degrees and bullying later (which only continued until I was twelve, thankfully). I learned to like being alone and often wished I would be lost so I could find a new life without anyone else. Attention became a negative thing and to this day, I prefer to watch and be behind the curtain.

The center of attention is a dreadful place to be.

Achluophobia: Darkness in My Head
Nothing is so complex to me as my relationship with the dark. I am nocturnal. The night is my home. The stars are friends and the moon is all the light I need. In the night, I am more creative and awake than ever in my life. More alive. But the darkness, the blackness that suffocates and is completely void of light... That is what terrifies me. A child may be afraid of the dark because they imagine monsters, but when you get older, you realize that monsters are real. Perhaps not in the sense that you once imagined, but in more terrifying forms. Murderers, corpses of loved ones who have passed, and the own demons in your head.

As a child in Washington and Indiana, my imagination was highly developed far beyond most adults, and traumas I'd seen and heard, strangely horrifying nightmares corrupted it. My imaginary friends weren't always nice. They started out that way, friendly grown-ups or children my age that mostly wanted to tell me secrets or watch me. But they quickly took on the qualities of bullies, my older brother, my father... Anyone who made me feel sad or angry, scared, or like I didn't want to exist anymore. Whenever this happened, I tried to stop talking to them and make up new friends. The old friends were never happy and would make the new ones "go away." When I finally moved to sunny Florida at the age of (about) five or six, it all stopped (only to come back later when moving to Alabama at age eight). Once I hit the age of ten, I no longer had imaginary friends or anything of the sort. But the feelings they gave me back then always remained, always at night or when I was alone. I would be trying to sleep or play quietly in my room and I would suddenly feel sad, lethargic, paranoid - as if I was being watched. If I tried to ignore it long enough, I would end up feeling dizzy and nauseated with an accelerated heart rate. (At one point in my teenage years, I spaced out only to find that I'd been laying on the floor and staring at the wall for nine hours. I promptly threw up.) This usually resulted in my fainting. But being alone in bed at night, this went unnoticed. And when someone came to check on me if I was playing, they would assume I'd fallen asleep.

I would go on to get a reputation for sleeping a lot.

Fear Becomes You, My Dear
Looking out my window at the falling leaves and the dry, brown grass I think about what this holiday means to me. I used to relish the chance to dress as a princess or angel - someone loved and adored. Then my view of the world soured and my desires changed. It quickly became not about the candy and games, but about the different masks I could adopt. Even though I was quite young, I wanted to become more and more terrifying things. Halloween was the chance to be someone braver than I was, someone who ran with her fears instead of from them. I was just as frightening as them, so they could not scare me. And being as frightening as them allowed me to know them as I knew myself, to become like them and be stronger for it.

Samhain is the time to unify myself. It's was, and is, spiritual to me. I've since gotten control of the strange discomfort and the paranoia that came over me when I was alone for too long. I can now spend time comfortably alone... With my little black cat. I've transformed bit by bit, and this time of year gradually took on new meaning. As I crossed into adulthood and left home at eighteen, it became about connecting with external and internal fears, becoming one with the unknown and often unseen, facing my mortality and honoring the dead, honoring myself, and embracing the darkness inside me - because whether I like it or not, the darkness and fear, the twisted nightmares and corrupted imagination... It's part of me. There is no night without day, and I am not complete without this aspect.

"I expected my shadow and l would join together like drops of water..." Hook

That's why I've become so "morbid," as normal people say. That's why I think and speak about things that other people cringe away from. I am learning to tame the darkness within me, learning to join with my fears so that I will never have to be afraid again.

In this world where only the strongest and most cunning survive,

it is better to be feared than be afraid.

Merry Samhain.
- An INFJ