Wednesday, August 22, 2012

Are You Afraid of the Dark? ...Apparently


So while I love nighttime and the dark, lately I’ve been stricken by this crippling fear.  Every night, as I’m getting ready for bed, I get this anxiety that there’s a murderer lurking in the darkness.  My tactic for dealing with this has been to jump into my bed and pull the covers over my head like a 5 year old.  Obviously, this will allow me to evade even the most insidious serial killer.  Maybe I need a therapist to help me get to the root of these issues.

(Insert picture of Brian Peppers here.  I was going to literally put one here but I google image searched him and I just can't.)

Last night, my plans were thwarted because after barricading myself in my room, (read here: closing my bedroom door) I realized that I forgot to look at my work schedule.  I could have possibly had work the next day, so I couldn’t rest until I double-checked.  This meant that I had to brave the horrifying downstairs of my house.  I turned on every possible light that I could as I went.  I looked around every corner for intruders.  Finally, I made it safely up to my room again.  Relieved, I could go to sleep in peace knowing I didn’t have to get up in the morning for work.

Then, I looked at my bed and realized I had forgotten my sheets in the dryer.  Meaning yet another perilous journey into the darkness lay ahead of me.  I would also have to venture into the basement.  Where obviously that baby monster from American Horror Story was living.

You think I would have learned by now that cleaning is not worth the aggravation.  The dusting and vacuuming I did a week ago have also disturbed the apparent throng of spiders who have chosen to take up residence in my bedroom.  Seriously, the other night, I was sitting in bed with my laptop, waiting for my genius to spark some inspiration for my new story, when Aragog fell from the ceiling onto my keyboard.  He then proceeded to crawl away somewhere into the depths of my comforter.  I had to sleep on the couch that night.  So now before I shut out my light for bed, I not only have to check my room for murderers but for spiders.

One thing I’ve been trying to do to allay my terror is make a joke out of it inside my own head.  There was this one episode of Full House when the girls watched a scary movie or something and couldn’t sleep.  To make them feel better, Uncle Joey acted out a skit where he was the monster’s mother.  This made the girls laugh.  Their fears seemed ridiculous.


This is a fairly successful strategy.  I made up phony headlines for the Townsend Times as I quickly grabbed my covers from the dryer.  “Local Youth Murdered in Basement.  If Only She Had Remembered The Sheets Earlier.”  It helped a little.  And since I’ve lived to tell the tale, I’m clearly fine. 

As I said, normally I love nighttime.  It’s odd- I’m more scared walking around my house in Townsend than I am jaunting around Boston at 1 am.

I forgot to mention in my last post, Jon and I even took a candlelit ghost tour of Salem last Friday.  I wasn’t scared at all.  This probably had something to do with the fact that we were both still drunk.  Also, the tour guide girl kept apologizing for how lame it was.  We loved her.

Plus, I was too distracted with drunk texting my ex.  *Face Palm* That was great.  To steal a line from my friend Brian, no one ever looks at a drunk text after sobering up and says, “Wow, I sounded awesome.  I should do that more often.”

So yes, nighttime is host to the weird and wonderful.  Hopefully, I can get over my irrational fears and enjoy it in its entirety once more.

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