Greetings Everyone!
Today’s post is written in the new modern memoir style. Read it slowly, and immerse yourself in the experience.
Notice that the new modern memoir style doesn’t minimize or gloss over the feeling of fear, and it doesn’t crank it up like a Hollywood horror movie either. The reality of the feeling is honored and acknowledged, yet the overall emphasis is on the outcome - what wisdom came as a result of the experience…
Dusk In The Neighborhood
Forehead pressed to the cool window, sparkling snowflakes gently falling, distract my pounding headache. I imagine them to be twinkling stars coming to wave ‘hello’ to me, delightfully soothing my aloneness. Slicing the chilly air my father’s commanding voice startles me, “Take money out of the coin jar and go get the newspaper. Now!”
“Yes”, I say, happy to get out of the house even though it will soon be dark, and I am deathly afraid of the dark.
Dressed for the winter walk, my way-too-small boots cramped around my feet, create a cadence of sound, crunch, crunch, crunch, in the icy cold snow, keeping me company along the way. Interior lights turning on, one after the other in the houses, reveal colored walls hung with pictures, also giving a sneak preview of the people inside before the drapes are drawn, solving my haunting mystery of who or what lives in there. The smell of dinner leaks out from the drafty windows of the large old Victorian homes that dominate the neighborhood.
The crunching snow beneath my feet continues to keep me company as the descending darkness begins to creep around me, unveiling long black alleyways between the houses. Street lights are of no comfort as the darkness drenches me with the grip of fear, blinding my sense of self.
The fluorescent lights of the corner store beam and beckon, like a lighthouse in an ocean storm, helping me to rest for a brief moment from my escalating fear of having to walk back into the very alive darkness. It feels like a heavy cloak confining and threatening my urge to quickly get home. The newspaper in my hand, rolled up and secured with an elastic, is my only weapon for what lurks in the depths of the dark.
The good company of crunching sounds at my feet is not heard anymore in the growing silence of the mounting fresh-fallen snow adding to the eerie feeling, palpable in the air. The heaviness tightening around me feels too much to carry, and I shiver and shrill at the embodiment of paralyzing terror that I now think is part of me.
In contrast to ‘being the walking dark’, the sparkling of the pure white snow invokes the realization that, just like the houses in the neighborhood, I too can turn on an inner light shifting the perceptions in my mind out of the dark and fear.
With that thought every single snowflake twinkles like stars, getting my attention in their brightness, as if reflecting a message from above. In my heart I feel the words, “you can turn on your own light in the dark just like the light in these houses.”
Placing the damp, cold, newspaper on the table at home, the bold headline reads, “The War Is Over”. Could that be life telling me that there was a war of light and dark within me causing great fear?
That was the night that I realized the fear, was of fear itself. My attention goes inside now where I feel and see my light, and I am grateful for the self-realization that I am the light in the dark.
I can see clearly now, because of that walk I learned how not to be afraid of fear.
I learned how to walk through it.
Anya Sophia Mann
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Beautiful, and inspirational. We can all use a reminder to shift our reality for ourselves when least we feel able.❤Thank you.
Beautiful lesson. Thank you for sharing.