I must be afraid of the dark.

I must be afraid of the dark, I am not but maybe that’s just because I have not been diagnosed by an expert yet. Those psychiatric doctors with long faces and white hairs that reek of experience in knowing our innermost thoughts, I long to sit in front of one. For the fun of it and also so they can put a diagnosis to this thing I have.

First I am not insane, it’s nothing intense like that but I am not sane as well. The saying “there’s only a thin line between sanity and insanity” is a ruse, you can easily skip between the two sides and find there’s no divide. Normal, not normal, normal, not normal and on we go. It’s not actually the boxes that matter because everyone has their perception of what’s considered normal and what’s not. For example my mother finds it ludicrous that I called her recently  in a very high pitched voice declaring “my feet looks like grandmas’”, she doesn’t see the humor in that, in fact she is horrified her “almost 29years old daughter’s feet are beginning to get smaller and wrinkle without her having achieved anything (i.e. Marriage). It was humorous to me because I have always wondered why my feet were so small and boom I connected the dots but I was met with a “she is crazy and senseless” silence. So many other examples like when I laughed at the breakup message my boyfriend of 5years sent to me and cried when I got home and there was no light. Point is I doubt that insanity can be truly measured.

Personally I have always skipped between what’s considered normal and what’s not since I was little but I don’t think it was ever at a noticeable rate, I have no recollections of my mother (a psychologist) trying to semi-analyze the little me to find cracks in her mental state but now mother, father and some extended relations are increasingly sitting on the psychotherapists’ chair trying to figure out my level of crazy. First bulb that lights up in their head is “she is not married” which is quite archaic I mean, it’s the new age there are more goals to desire like actually publishing, getting a proper education, building a business empire but when and if I mention these I would be bound in chains and dragged to see a psychiatrist. Now I actually desire to see one and that’s normal to me. I have always been a realist and I like to put labels on things and situations around me, I would never believe a big foot sighting even if I saw one walking in front of me, I would look for a way to make it something real, something that already exists, that everyone knows about not something magical and unreal. So my desire to see a “white haired, well experienced, glasses wearing” therapist stems from this fact. There has to be a name for this thing wrong with my mind and I strongly feel its fear of the dark.

Let’s not get things twisted, I sleep with the lights off, love with the lights off and can find my way around my little apartment even in the middle of the night with no lights on. But I am afraid of the dark, there has to be a lamp present, even if it’s off. There has to be rays coming in from the stars in the night sky when I take a shower without lights on in my bathroom, my phones must be charged even though I would turn them off, there has to be light even when I do not need it or use it. It has to be there. That’s a legit fear right? Something not being there, something you might not need at the present or ever but mustn’t leave, the fact that it’s gone or not present is the scary part.

When I was 16 I had my eyes on this guy, he was much older and had us teenagers giggling anytime he looked our way. He was quite handsome and had such a cool air around him when he eventually came to me and asked me for a date/learning session in his house after my classes I agreed. I was super elated and the dates started, he would kiss and tease and I the naïve girl I was had butterflies fluttering about in my stomach when I told him I couldn’t do the “sex” thing yet and he agreed. It was so exciting, then one day during a lesson, between teasing he asked to play a game. Peek-a-boo and to play this game effectively I had to be blindfolded, he did and tied my arms to the bed and started touching me. Took all my clothes off and wouldn’t listen anymore when I said “stop that, it hurts”, the act ended with him inviting his two friends to partake in the fun. At a point I knew it wasn’t him, the hands were rougher and I begged to see what was being done to me and lo there were three men who were taking turns at shredding me. I cried, when I tried to scream, I got threatened to be made to walk home naked. I was told to get cleaned up and given my clothes when they were done and till date nothing beats the horror of those hours. Funny twist to the story is, he came back, apologized and explained the other guys put him up to it and he had no choice. There my fear of the dark reared its head and I took him back. Why? I do not need a therapist to explain that people saw us together, I was the lucky one and he had broken me, taken all I had that made me special (then) so why would I allow him leave? Then I would be left in the dark, with nothing, no one and my pride gone. I took him back. Fear of the dark.

Years later when I was in an abusive relationship while in the university this same fear hooked me to a spot and I still didn’t want to be left alone in the dark, I took the punches, fought back a couple of times but never left. I have seen this pattern in various aspects of my life over the years, fear of being left alone so I would rather stay with a pompous, self-absorbed man with no plans rather than sleep alone at night. It was never like I had to be with him every night but I could be alone in my room, comfortable with the fact that he’s somewhere telling another lady he loves how her thin arms wrapped around him as long as he was still mine…in a way. Stay in a job that depressed me daily than jump into the world of small scale business, digital marketing or even begin publishing my writing, all things I am pretty confident I can do but…fear of the dark.

Stability has always been that one thing I have always required to keep a balance in my mind and hence give the people around me less to worry about. It’s what people see so they don’t see that my insides are a mess, that I am still scared of blindfolds or that men removing their belts in front of me would send me into a fury or that I never felt complete since I was sixteen, that something was taken and this façade is how I have kept it all together. Now it goes against the grain of my structured life that I would be 29, single, contemplating hopping up and leaving town to start afresh in an unknown location, ditch the friends and job that have kept me going all these years. I have always been the type that would have just gotten married to “keep the peace” and stay miserable for the same. I have always been in a relationship, never single for 13 whole years, I always had someone or a backup someone that might just be as terrible but someone all the same. I have always had friends, a job, a house and basically I always had light even if were turned off.

It’s unusual for me to intentionally throw my lamps out this time and that’s why I need a “white haired, well experienced, glasses wearing” therapist to help me label this thing and hopefully get me not to jump out the window with the lamps. Though I have come to the realization that all my life I have lived for others, created a façade, smiled, cooked, cleaned, be good in bed, worked, called, texted, loved and moved a certain way for people to see and then be sure that I am fine in the head. Truth is I have not been fine for years, I was just too afraid to let anyone know. I am presently taking a list of things I do and things I love doing, comparing lists and doing only the things that are good for me, that “me” wants to do, the others can go out with the lamps. I never used them anyway.

PS: It’s quite possible that this is a figment of my imagination and the postulated scenarios are not true or even about Yenique.