Wednesday, September 28, 2005

Phew... been awhile. (Fear of the dark).
Man... long story short I got in a lotta crap with my school that eventually led to the spiraling down of the entire condition of my family to the point of which you can see them on cops. Anyway, I was grounded from this place for awhile. But meh... sometimes I feel like writing about my thoughts. You know, let them out.

On to the point: a while ago I was online and another person in the chatroom was saying he was scared out of his witts because he thinks he saw red glowing eyes next to the lightswitch in his house, in the middle of the night, when his parents were out. He had himself locked in the room, you know, the whole shmeal.

My first thought was "Yeah. Stay there and let it eat your parents first." But then I began to contemplate what these fears are stemming from. Why is it that some elusive creature or evil spirit would decide to enter into the house of a teenager subsceptable to those dillusions during the night at a time his parents were out just to dwell in a room and stare at whomever comes down a specific hallway only to vanish when the next day comes?

To be technical, no one has a fear of the dark. It's the fear of what is lurking in the dark that people are afraid of. The fear of the unknown. The fear of what COULD be. And that, of course, is a somewhat rational fear. If your a 5'5" 103 pound teenaged girl walking down a dark alley all alone, then you'd be afraid, for obvious reasons.

Personally I am glad that my fears of the dark are rather minimal. Most of them spawned from when my imagination would decide to run wild. When that happens, a videogame controller can appear to be some sort of otherwordly parasite. I take comfort in being able to navigate my surroundings without acutally needing to see anything, and not having the fear that something or someone may be lurking in the shadows around the corner. I also like to take pride that whenever I am ever stricken by fear, instead of panicking and running, my adrenalline glands flow, I get remarkably arrogant and formidable, and then decide to investigate.

Fears of the dark have a tendency to be carried on from horror movies, and childhood fears of the fictional "boogie man" which takes many names and faces. These fears are what I call irrational or supernatural fears. The fear that the undead is creeping in your backyard. The fear that some statue or picture in your house may be haunted by an unknown spirit. These fears are drivin by imagination, and often times hold little rationality or proof outside of "what I thought I saw last night when I was home alone". I've learned to shrug these fears off. Take rationality into account.

Besides, when's the last time you heard on the news that the remains of a majoratively devoured teenager were found in a residential house by their parents returning from their night out?


Then there's the rational fears. The fears of bugs, though a little stretched beyond what it should be, is one of them. The fear of being stalked, the fear of someone breaking into your house. These are things that, you know, actually do happen. Most of these fears can be offset by modern housing an security measures. There's even a 5000-year old cure for these: Get a dog.

Mental training and man's best friend can help these fears of the unkown in the dark. And in time, they can be almost entirely removed. As a last word of advice, keep any fears that you have rational. Only a fool is fearless, but don't cringe at every shadow in YOUR house.


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