Growing up, I had this nightmare.

I think I have what some may call an ‘over active imagination.’ My sister once convinced me there was a monster in the lake, an alien at school, and a ghoul in the attic. I didn’t even know what a ghoul was -- I imagined it as a person with glowing eyes. This stuff didn’t scare me, not really, I just wanted to understand it all.

The thing was, despite my imagination, I’d never remember my dreams. Well, almost. I remembered one I had growing up.

This dream was the worst kind; I woke up in it. That is, I dreamed that I woke up. That made me think it was real. It started when my second sister came along, and I got pushed out of my old room, into what used to be our playroom. Maybe I felt abandoned? Got that middle-sibling-syndrome? Either way I started to have this dream.
I’d wake up and everything would be normal. It just didn’t feel normal. It felt empty. I never left the room I woke up in -- my new room, the playroom -- never investigated, not in the dream. I just knew I was alone.

Then I’d look outside. I don’t know how it was possible because the only windows in that room were too high for me to see through at that age, but I’d somehow see through. And what I saw scared me. There were these cardboard cutouts of my family.

That was all that was left. I was alone.

The dream kept coming, off and on, for a few years. During that time, I learned the meaning of ‘abandonment issues.’ I didn’t get why I had those. I had never been abandoned, not once. People were always there for me. Hell, I didn’t even know that there were people out in the world who got abandoned. That is, besides Little Orphan Annie -- but that was fiction. It didn’t click that something like that could really happen. Or that Daddy Warbucks wouldn’t be right around the corner if it did.

So I tried not to feel abandoned. And it seemed to work. I wasn’t afraid of abandonment anymore. Good job me, case closed, great willpower. I should be a Green Lantern.

Except.

Except there were times I still felt afraid. Times when I’d be lying awake and thinking about things. Times when, as I got older, I’d be thinking about who I was. And If I was who I wanted to be. And who I  actually was -- if I liked them. Times I’d answer no. Times late at night, after my parents tucked me in and said goodnight, after my sisters and I laughed together all day, times when I was very much not abandoned, that I’d feel the fear again.

It was around sixth grade that I started to think maybe I wasn't a good person. I had been, once, I’d been very nice; it was all I’d ever wanted to be. Except a super secret spy. But maybe I… just wasn’t.

Nice, I mean, I was definitely not a spy. Sadly.

It was around then that I started thinking about the dream too. I decided it wasn’t abandonment. The people in my life were either nice enough or stupid enough not to abandon me and I knew it. Maybe that was the problem. I was convinced I wasn’t who I was supposed to be. I wasn’t me. The person I was becoming, the guarded person who hid anger behind smiles and tears behind headaches wasn’t who I was.

It got worse when I was alone.

I’d be fine until I’d lay down in bed, until I was saying goodnight to my parents because even though I was getting older, they wouldn’t abandon me and still tucked me in every night. It wasn’t until then that I’d choke up. That I’d get scared. For all my scoffing and hiding and smiling, I’d get scared. I would lose that ability to speak momentarily. 

When the light turned off, I’d tell myself to tune out, shut down, go to sleep. Because, what I’d never wanted to admit was that I was afraid. Not of monsters under the bed, not of abandonment, but what I’d always been afraid of.
Being alone with myself. A complete stranger.