It Starts Small

Touching that cloud was like touching a hot stove. I instantly withdrew my hand and shook myself from that place. I knew what I felt. Fear. I have an irrational fear of snakes. In my mind I’m convinced every time I go to my dad’s house they purposely seek me out. The most recent visit, I crossed paths with three of them. Ok, maybe one was the same snake on two occasions, but I don’t get close enough to find out. The second one was while getting sand out of the creek bed with my dad. Poor guy is still recovering his hearing.

The type of fear I’m taking about is not the same type of fear as snakes. This is the type of fear that froze me in place or ignited that flight response. It was some how different than the fear of snakes. When I touched that fear, my mind was filled with a million pictures. Pictures of every moment in my life I had feared. I centered on the most recent, that night weeks earlier.

I focused On that night and the more I replayed the events in my mind, the more I became angry. That cloud of anger followed me to bed that night. That night I had a horrific dream. I dreamed I was in that shack in the center of my junk yard. The door was open behind me and a bright light shined into the room. In the center of that room was the red stone and it glowed. I stood in the doorway hesitant to grab it. It was just beyond the light. I needed to take it out of this place. Just as I stepped inside the shack, the door slammed behind me. The sound of the slamming door stopped my very heart from beating. I became fanatic and dropped to the ground trying to find the rock in the darkness. Above me I could hear whispers and voices so I looked up to see body shapes. Their faces resembled people I knew but their eyes were different. Their eyes emitted a glow. They were almost like marbles with a dark center that had a glow. They sort of looked like animal eyes when you shine a light into them in the darkness. For whatever reason I called out to them and asked for help. They all laughed at me and sneered. The room filled up with that dark cloud. I tried to run from it but the door was locked and that cloud consumed every inch of the room.

One of the, I don’t know what to call them, beings spoke and I couldn’t understand him. In an instant that cloud became chains that shackled my feet and wrists and my mouth. I could see the rock still in the center of the room. Every attempt I made to try to free myself only made the shackles stronger. I started to hear the words the things above me were speaking. They were awful. They spoke of how I was a nothing and a nobody. I was garbage is a polite way of saying what they said.

One of the beings spoke and the room started to fill up with water. In my panic I tried even harder to pull the shackles off. The water continued to rise but I had no escape. No where to go. I couldn’t speak. I screamed over and over in my head, someone help me. The water rose above my head. I could manage to get just above it gasp for air but eventually that failed and I was being held under the water. I was screaming for help but no one would help me. I closed my eyes and gave up. I was going to die here. I heard a loud thundering voice shout ENOUGH!

I woke up in an instant. I was not laying in bed, I was standing. I was standing in a dark room. I fumbled around to find the light. Flipping the light on I sat on the bed and it occurred to me that I had peed myself in my sleep. I was instantly embarrassed. It was 4:18 in the morning and I was standing there in pee soaked pajamas unable to catch my breath and trembling. I changed my clothes and gathered the bedding up. Snuck out to the garage and started the laundry. Thankfully no one was awake yet.

I grabbed my blanket my daughter made me and stepped out on the porch. I buried my head and just began to cry.

These nightmares were nothing new to me. This one was actually mild compared to previous versions. I had been having them since I was very young. I hid from everyone I knew that I was scared of the dark. I always had a candle burning in my room at night or some sort of light on. I wasn’t terrified of monsters or scary creepy cartoonist renderings of monsters. No, I was afraid of that darkness. I guess, maybe it was a monster. I was afraid of those eyes. The common between all the dreams I could remember was that darkness always imprisoning me and those eyes.

I am convinced the nightmares were a huge reasoning why I wet the bed as a kid. I used to crawl under my bed to sleep because I was afraid of the dark and somehow being under my bed kept me safer than sleeping on top of my bed. It also help hide the fact that I’d wet the bed. I tried to talk to my mom about the dreams I was having but she brushed it off. Instead, she shamed me for wetting the bed and made me feel embarrassed about it. My therapist said it was repressed memories, it I could never link anything I dreamed to a memory I had. It wasn’t like I had bee in a horrible car accident and relived it in my dreams. The only correlation between those dreams and memory was an old hail and brimstone preacher told me once (I wasn’t behaving properly and giving grief to my mother) that if I didn’t straighten up, satan himself would drag me to hell. I’m not sure if that is what caused these dreams, but they had always been apart of me and with me.

I once dreamed not to long after my mom died that her casket was hidden in my closet. I opened it and her head fell off and rolled to the floor. It turned on its own and looked at me and said I can’t go to heaven because of you. She had those weird eyes. I thought about the eyes. I’ve seen those eyes outside my dreams. I’ve seen people’s eyes shift to those eyes. I can’t explain it.

It was Sunday morning. I told my sister I’d go to church with her but I was dreading it. I didn’t want to be around people. I didn’t want to have to explain why I was there. I just wanted to hide. I wanted to pull the ground up and hide from everybody and the ruin I was standing in. All morning I thought about excuses not to go, but something deep down inside desired to go. I knew I needed to go, but truthfully I didn’t want to go.

Have you ever had that experience, in church, where you are pretty certain that the message was specifically for you? I was beginning to understand that nothing was coincidence. You remember a few posts back….go to Texas? Well, God had purpose. I’m going to put a link to the sermon and I encourage all of you to watch. Here

My fear: abandonment and rejection. I had finally shaken off the dream the night before and started to wonder on the drive home….

What truly is fear?