When I was a child trying to sleep in my pink princess-themed bedroom, I remember being terrified of the pitch blackness that overtook my surroundings when my lights turned out and my parents hushed me goodnight. To them, it seemed that I was inexplicably afraid of the dark. I had no specific boogie monster hiding under my bed, or repeated nightmares haunting my sleep. Yet every night I would come to them with hushed whispers and teary eyes begging for solace they could not really provide. My monster was the unknown, the concept that I had no way to fully know what could be lurking in the shadows. This fear, so simple and yet so complex, would last with me far longer than my childhood bedroom did.
Facing your fears is often portrayed to be some heroic journey, one where you eventually fear-free. But to be honest, there are some fears that never really disappear; they just evolve, sometimes growing quieter with age or experience. It’s like that old saying about public-speaking: “Imagine everyone in the audience in their underwear.” Yet, no matter how many times you try to do it, there’s a part of your brain that still, “But what if I’m the one in my underwear?” Fear doesn’t always vanish, but it can become more familiar as you grow and desensitize yourself to it. You have to learn to sit with discomfort, to recognize it for what it is: just another part of being human. Kind of like how I eventually made peace existing in the darkness. It’s not because I stopped being scared of the unknown, but because my fear has evolved and complicated itself as I have evolved and complicated myself. I now know that the darkness is merely the absence of light, but what’s unknown to me is the life that’s in front of me. And that thought is probably the scariest thing that I could imagine.
About the Author
Meg Rust is an Honors student majoring in Psychology with a concentration in Development, with minors in Sociology and Spanish.
Leave a Reply