While the fear of the dark generally speaks of being terrified of the dark in general, my fear is very specific. I’m not scared to go after dark and in fact find it quite relaxing to walk around in the very early hours of the morning. However, I’m terrified of being alone while I sleep. I need to have at least three rooms filled with light; my own, the hall outside my room and either a living room or kitchen right next to my room. I live in a safe neighborhood and there’s no prowlers, violent crime, break ins, sexual assaults, or anything in that nature. The most that happens is the occasional car jacking and even that’s pretty rare. It’s also oddly specific to wherever I’m living. When I travel, I don’t have this fear and in fact often wear eye masks. I am just terrified of being alone in my room in my own house in the dark at night. Maybe there’s some truth to something having happened to me as a child but I honestly don’t remember it, which just makes this more terrifying, because I have no idea what I’m expecting to happen.
I have a couple other irrational fears, like a fear of gutters (from a terrifying story I heard as a child of a kid at my school supposedly getting trapped down one), a fear of ants (because I watched a documentary once about a certain type of African ant that can eat a person alive and by chance, woke up later that week to an infestation in the room I was staying in, being bitten), and a fear of falling from great heights, to my death. This one isn’t caused by anything, I’m just terrified that I’ll be clumsy and fall off a cliff or high up place, to my death. Any of these, while not strictly rational, I can understand. My debilitating fear of the dark on the other hand..
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