I’ve once again been on the ramble train that allows me to learn more about my own damned self. It seems to be an endless thing the last year or so, and with all the traumas I’ve faced in life, I shouldn’t be as surprised as I find myself being when it happens.
I am however somewhat struggling with which entries go to which journal here lately. It’s all related and yet it’s only so related and is a clear reflection of the mess I call my mind.
I want to talk about my fear of the dark. It’s something I’ve mentioned in many places, including my other journal and the memory that I’ve been hiding from you guys- honestly goes in the other journal but what I’m going to do about it- goes in this one, so I’ve got a interwoven mess going on atm.
I don’t like to talk about the things that make me uncomfortable, especially when my reactions to them are near phobia like and not logical at all, but here we go.
When I was a small child, after my blood brother was born, my mother would often leave me in the bathtub to play by myself. I started out liking it but, she was honestly a flake and had a tendency to forget me. She managed to forget to pick up from school many times in my early years as well. I’d find myself the only kid outside of the building, cold, wet and alone- well after the last teacher had left and the doors had been locked. That isn’t relevant, other than to show how flaky she often was after the schizophrenia really set in.
My early years however she wasn’t quite as bad. I’ve already talked about seeing something while in the bath that caused me to scream bloody murder for her to come, then flaking out myself and using the excuse I loved her/missed her when she showed up because I knew she wouldn’t believe me if I tried to explain what I saw and why I was screaming.
In this particular instance I was roughly 4 1/2 years old. My blood brother (then sister) had already been born, we lived in the house on Cardinal Lane and she put me in the tub and went to take a nap with my blood brother. Normally it was mostly okay. I’d see things, that I knew weren’t on this plane, that I knew no one else could see and usually it was okay. Sometimes it was like little pixel shaped things, the green and blue were friendly, the red pixels were not so friendly.
This time it wasn’t okay. The bathroom was upstairs and she had put me into play in the bath while it was daylight out. I was okay until it wasn’t daylight out. I remember it gradually getting darker, and fear slowly setting in. My mother didn’t hear me calling and I knew if I screamed for her, I would be in trouble again. Eventually it was so dark, that I didn’t feel like I could see anything around me and I was scared. I remember feeling like the darkness was swallowing me, it surrounded me and it moved and it felt like it was smothering me, trying to make me a part of it.
I got out of the tub, just to find myself looking into the mirror of what seemed like a pitch black room. I’m really not sure why what I saw scared me so bad, it was only another face. I saw my face but there was an adult face also. A face I didn’t know or recognize at all.
I think where I am going with this is, I’ve long known about my aversion to the dark. I pretty much rarely sleep in the dark alone. The bedroom in my current apartment is so dark when you close the door to the living area, that I can’t sleep in there. There are no outside windows and the placements of the windows in the living space means it’s nearly completely dark in there.
It reminds me of being scared as a child. If I go into the other room, shut the door behind and the light is off- I have to cross to the other side where the light switch is and very quickly turn it on. Most days I know exactly where the light switch is, even in the complete darkness but somedays?
Somedays I’m panicking so hard by the time I get the five or six steps across the room (Thank god the room is wider than it is long) and I flounder to find the switch. I feel the panic flooding my veins and I can’t seem to hold any sort of thought as I frantically search the wall for the light switch.
Part of this necromantic journey is aimed at helping me with this. I can do darkness with moonlight, I am fine outside at night etc, but for some reason a completely dark room scares the shit out of me. I still won’t look in a mirror unless its very intentional, I never accidentally glance at a dark tv screen, or the microwave front, or pretty much any reflective surface after dark- but I don’t during the day either. I’ve placed my tv where I can’t accidentally wake up and roll over and look into it’s screen and…
Yeah I’m ridiculous. I’m being extra ridiculous today because I just received the key for the bigger apartment. I was expecting it, though it’s a bit later than I expected and I intended to get on moving my shit into the other apartment tonight and likely will work on it until everything is moved. My weird sleeping habits won’t be effected by an all nighter and thanks to @Anziel_Merkaba keeping me up till five am giggling like I was a three year old… I slept late today.
The point is, the bigger apartment has a window in pretty much every room. There’s also a balcony and big windows and there isn’t a room that will be nearly as dark as my current bedroom. I’ve been intending, for quite some time to essentially lock myself in the damned dark room… and force myself to get over this fckd up fear that I can’t fully explain. I know it’s because I wasn’t alone in the dark as a child, but I know how to take care of me nowadays, so I shouldn’t have any uninvited guests.
It’s possible I would though, anything nearby picking up on the fear as boils over and flows out of me, so I am thinking that if I insist upon this insanity, just to see if it will help… I should probably start with an entity, go into this room with a whole lot of nothing and… make myself see that I will be quite alright.
Maybe it won’t work, maybe it won’t help but you know what. I’ve been contemplating the idea for months. I’ve though about how I could take my phone and just not turn on the screen, clutch the flashlight tightly to my chest or any number of things…
But if I can bail, I know I will so seems like. I’ll probably move everything over to the new apartment, banish and protect this one, summon up Anpu because he seems to want in on this job, lock the front door shut the other and then… sit in the darkness until it either becomes a part of me I am not scared of or I can’t take any more and frantically search the walls for the light switch.
You guys don’t usually seem to believe me when I say I am bat shit crazy but. I’m pretty set on this insanity and it’s not the first time I’ve been set on doing something that was either going to heal a trauma, or make it 100x’s worse if it went badly so.
Chalk it up to just another day in the life of Keteriya.