My own darkness.

I don't like darkness. It has never been my forte. I remember as a child being very scared when it was dark, a fear that has stayed alive throughout my life.

Friend @JonicaBradley has suggested this topic as a writing prompt for this week. My absence on this platform during the previous week did not allow me to participate in another previous post.

Let me tell you why I don't like the darkness. I’m part of a family group that had six siblings, five of us spent our childhood together and then in our teenage years we separated, only to meet again in adulthood.

But, in order to properly explain my fear of the dark I’ll tell you that I am extremely nervous, to the point that my brothers took advantage of that and hid very often to scare me. Especially if it was dark, it was even better to do so. Supposedly, doing that was supposed to get rid of my habit of getting scared so easily.

Well, they were wrong. It wasn't until well into my older years that I was able to control my fears a bit and I didn't do it on my own, but with specialized help. I used to get so scared when the power went out and I didn't have a bright spotlight to see things, I learned that I should always put my bible under my pillow. Then when darkness came for different reasons, I would take my bible and place it on my chest and that alone was enough to feel calm.

My anguish was such in the face of the darkness that my skin would fill with sweat. It rolled down my forehead, my chin filled with beads of sweat and you could see the drops of water rolling down my temples.

The panic I could feel because of the darkness was a fear learned through the screams of fright uttered by my siblings, while they would hide in the dark in any corner of the house, or behind doors, or in a corner of the house, waiting for me to pass by unsuspectingly. Then I would scream the scream of fear that I “loved” so much.

 I had a hard time overcoming this fear of the dark. So much so that being a professional I decided to see a psychiatrist to learn to master my fears. Thanks to my efforts and the help I was given I was able to reduce the impact many of my fears had.

Today I remember the times in my childhood when these continous scares from my siblings began.  It seems to me that, as a technique to try to eliminate fears, it’s a very negative and innefective way with scarce results.

I know that fears are a product of our imagination and because I had such a productive imagination, my fears were many unfounded. They ruled my feelings and my expressions of panic for many years of my life.

There are fears that help us to be alert and this is a defense mechanism that is very helpful in order to keep us alert to situations that could threaten our mental health.

But there are also irrational fears, those fears that our mind leads us to live with greater intensity to the point that they govern our behavior and our rationality.

It seems unbelievable that something that started as something fun for several members of my family turned out to be so negative and so frustrating for many years of my life, to the point that it was extremely hard to fight it. Even long after consultations with the psychiatrist I spent many years trying to correct my major irrational fears, including my fear of the dark and what lies behind it.

There are different types of darkness, the absence of physical light and the loss of spiritual light. Being able to fight the fear of not having any source of physical light cost me more than fighting the absence of my spiritual light, reading the word taught me the way to find my spiritual light and this has kept me awake for a long time. It helped me eliminate many of my fears.

But now, even though I don't like the darkness, the torment of being immersed in physical darkness is a part of my past because the power of my spiritual light eliminates almost all my fears.

It’s a great experience to remember and write about, what the word darkness means to me.