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At night I would lie in bed with my stuffed animals aligned around my body. They kept me safe at night, guarding me from the monsters that roamed in the dark. My bed was relatively close to the door so I would crawl to the edge of my bed, creep up onto the wooden frame, and then take a deep breath trying my hardest to force myself from my bed to the hallway without being grabbed from underneath by the decapitated hand that wandered in small dark spaces hoping to grab an innocent’s ankle bringing it to an unknown inescapable beyond.
This night started like the others.  Springing myself out from my room into the hallway lit by a small night light forcing the darkness back, I went into the bathroom and sat on the toilet. The toilet was adjacent to the bathtub and in front of the bathtub hung a curtain. The curtain hid behind it what I would imagine to be a woman, a woman lying in the bathtub waiting to attack me. As a child; I always went to the bathroom in the dark, in fear that if I turned on the light I’d wake up my family members. So I sat, and in the blackness I saw her; the woman from the A Haunting episode. She was the dead grandmother who appeared on the tv with a blaring laugh. She was pale and tattered, laughing as if she knew something bad was to come. I hurried up and got out of the bathroom, shutting the door behind me trapping her. As I sprinted back to the safety of my bedroom I was stopped. I was stopped by the man in the hall.

I then recalled that a week earlier my brother tried to scare me. I went to the kitchen as fast as my small legs could carry me, while making sure to turn on each light as I raced past. My journeys back up stairs were always safer, until that night. I had made some hot cocoa and I was walking down the lighted hall. My brother then jumped out at me. I shrieked and clenched my warm mug. I tried to step back, but failed to catch myself as all the hot cocoa pierced my skin.

Due to this memory, I assumed the shadow was my brother trying to scare me once again. I looked back up at the tall thin black shadow man that stood before me and then quickly over my shoulder towards my brothers room which had the door wide open letting me see the horrifying fact that he was lying still in his bed. I refused to look back at the man. I remember screaming and that was it. I have always wondered what that man was. It wasn’t my shadow, and there wasn’t anything there in the morning, “So what was it?”. I have asked myself repeatedly throughout the years.  It’s a question that’s haunted me.

ll
I focused on my art. I got a gold key and placed second at nationals. My only friend was my boyfriend and I alienated myself from all the friends I once had. In the mornings we’d walk down the hall, hands locked. It was where I felt safe. From there we would walk to the back of the staircase where we’d sit. I would pull my knees to my chest, with my books to my left while he sat to my right scrunched up into the corner. I would lie my head on his shoulder and we would look out the windows that stared back, across from us. We’d talk until the school bell would vibrate our chests and I’d return to the mundane day, looking forward to the passing period where I would be reconnected with the place that calmed my anxious mind.

lll
I felt my chest grow tight as he chased me down the hall. I opened the door to the one place he couldn’t come; my new safe place. I rushed past the door searching for an open stall. I’d find comfort in closing it behind me, locking myself in a small space. I would then sit down, shutting my eyes as my head buried into my knees. I would wrap my arms tightly around my legs trying to feel stability as I felt myself growing alone and confused.
In gym I would see him again. We were told to walk laps and during this time I would try to escape, to get away and stay out of sight. I would hide in the crevice between the tall beam and the wall, hidden by a foam pad. I’d pull my knees to my chest and squeeze my eyes shut, hoping not to hear his voice, hoping not to see his face; I wanted to disappear.

IV
I stood in line with my Mother, voluntarily registering myself for another year. My eyes filled with tears and I shook my head as the voice in my head cried out, “I can’t do this. I can’t do another year. I can’t be here”.
I had isolated myself completely. I had no one to talk to. The only person I had was myself and I hated myself for I felt like a repulsive worthless being. The voice in my head was the only voice that I had to communicate with. The one voice not making me feel so alone. The voice would constantly interrogate me, “What went wrong, Who was at fault, do you miss him, did you mess up, or was it that you really were unhappy, was he a bad boyfriend, or was it your corrupt mind that made you believe the thoughts it created?”

I sunk into the couch, slipping off my shoes and pulling my knees to my chest as I sat at an angle, making it so that she was at my right and If I were to stare directly as I’d talk, I’d only see the desk which lied in the corner of the room stacked with books. She sat across from me and I read aloud the letter that I had prepared. I felt dumb, I couldn’t understand why I was here. As she talked in response to my letter the voice in my head began to interrupt, “Is there something wrong with me or is it everybody else making me think these things?”

Eventually it seemed as if even therapy wouldn’t help me. I felt so isolated and hopeless that I fell. I fell into myself, I lost myself. I got so stuck inside of myself that I felt trapped. There were nights where I would lie in bed and feel as if I was confined in my own body. As if my body were not big enough for my thoughts. There were mornings where I would hide under all the covers refusing to go to school. Feeling as if I could not do it, feeling as if sitting in class for 40 minutes was too much. Feeling as if I had to sit in silence with myself being confined in my body with no freedom to distract myself from myself would be too much.

I missed school, I missed myself. It was as if I lost all the control I once had over myself. I would get urges; Urges to do specific things. Write out certain ideas, organize parts of my room, binge until my body felt stuffed and i’d stumble to my bed trying to contain the pain, shutting my eyes hoping to fall asleep escaping the physical pain that erupted in my abdomin.

V
I became the man in the hall. I became the question that needed an answer. Why am I thinking certain things? Why do I do certain things? Why do others do certain things? I wanted all the answers and wasn’t able to accept the fact that not everything had an answer. I felt security in answers and fear in the unknowns. I wanted to know exactly what will happen to me. I observed how negative actions affected others in an attempt to save myself. If I were to think something negative such as, “This person who is talking is annoying”, I would feel so terrible and wonder why I would think that towards someone who did nothing to me. It would bother me and I would feel like a broken person because of it.

I allowed myself to become the isolated dark being that stood blankly in the hall. I was the question that I wanted to understand. I got so lost that I needed help finding myself. I got to a point that I didn’t know what ideas or opinions were my own anymore. I would question myself, question if I was messed up. The people around me made me feel as if I had a problem and it wasn’t until therapy that I realized there’s nothing wrong with me. I am smart, and I have figured out most of the issues on my own and worked through them. I didn’t need help identifying problems. I needed the reassurance that I was normal, that I was okay. I needed to know that I’m just curious and I look at the world in a black and white way which isn’t a problem. I needed the reassurance that I am my own person and that my outcomes won’t be exactly as others.  I noticed every thought I had and would observe the world in a way that I noticed every switch and change. My therapist said, “In a way you enjoy struggling. You enjoy picking apart your thoughts and figuring out the thoughts so that you will know why you are in fact struggling”. I don’t enjoy struggling; I hate struggling. I hated that phase of my life for it was miserable. What I do enjoy is understanding. I enjoy understanding why people are the way they are, why I do certain things, why I feel certain things. The ability to understand is the light that guides me through the hall, distancing myself from the man who once stopped me in my path.