I am terrified
I am that person who goes to Knott’s Scary Farm and ends out breaking down in tears
Just waiting in line for the bathroom
I went to see Insidious 3 at the movie theatre
I sat in the back and spilled Coke all over my jeans, screaming,
“DON’T GO IN THERE.
OH MY GOD. TURN ON A LIGHT.”
For 97 minutes.
I am terrified
And you’d think the easy answer would be something like,
“Don’t go to see horror movies by yourself”
Or “stay in your house and don’t go outside on Halloween”
And maybe, just maybe, think about not searching Youtube for “top ten creepiest videos”
At 11:30 at night
In the dark
When you’ve downed about five cups of coffee.
My mother, the next morning;
“Why are all the lights on in the living room?”
“…it’s my aesthetic?”
“Did you watch those damn videos again?”
“…yeah…”
I am 18
I can join the army and buy a lottery ticket and smoke cigarettes
I also live in fear of a demonic possession or a zombie apocalypse
Or a Trump presidency
I am a card-carrying bona fide member of adulthood
I am a proud Gryffindor, just with the heart of a badger instead of a lion and
They say
“Maddie, that makes you a Hufflepuff,”
To which I say, “Fight me Helen.”
And then she does and I’m like
“Ahhh, okay you’re right.”
I am an adult and my fear seems so childish sometimes
But I am not a coward.
No matter how old we are, the dark is still the dark
Maybe we’re scared of it for a reason
Maybe when we were little, our parents were just as scared of the monsters under the bed
As we were.
Because the world is full of monsters.
Maybe you passed one on the street today.
And the world is full of ghosts.
Maybe you see them too.
They are the weight of the words caught up in our throats that we can’t speak
They are the days when our hands can do nothing but tremble
There are boys and girls with dead eyes walking the world
There are men and women with predatory smiles and cold hearts
And we carry this knowledge with us everywhere we go
Because the world is not a kind place
And I am so afraid.
Maybe that’s what makes me brave.
Since I was 10 years old
I have had nightmares
Of men without faces, unfamiliar places
Waking me at three A.M. too scared to scream
Unable to breathe, unable to move
Like growing pains.
I’d laugh at silly me, scared of things no one else can see
And yet I have learned to live with the monsters under my bed
The ghosts under my skin
That doesn’t mean I don’t fear them
It just means that in a world that is sometimes so dark
I have learned to be my own light.
