9-20

I have always been afraid.

As a child I slept with a wide flat light plugged in beside the bed, to ward off the things I couldn't see. The things I couldn't see, I imagined, and my imagination has always been unguarded and wild.

I was frightened of things I did see, undisguised in the light. My father's angry fists striking through walls and doors, or falling on the ribs of my brothers as I sat in still shock and did not know what to do because I was a child and the parent must be obeyed so what he was doing had to be right even though it did not feel right.

I was frightened of my brother too, in different ways. I was frightened of his attention and his ridicule, wondering what mood he would be in, whether he would love me and perhaps even be kind and play a game with me, or if he would be jeering, feeding me candy coated with salt or encouraging me to jump off the treehouse, or pinching the sides of my body and telling me I was getting fat and no one loved me.

Once as a little child I was very sick, sick enough that I could not go to the Titanic exhibit which, even then, was strangely crushing. I read children's books by Robert Ballard and stared with wonder at a pair of boots buried in the sand, their inhabitant eaten away by time and sea water and fish. I wanted to see this marvel, this destruction, the pieces of memory that remained from a tragedy that took so many from their boots. I wanted to see what was left of them and try to learn who they were, so they were not forgotten. I have always been frightened of being forgotten.

But I was sick. My father and brothers went without me, and my mother sat with me over a hot bucket as I breathed in steam with a towel over my head and cried because my body hurt and my throat was on fire and I was so tired and I wanted to see the Titanic exhibit.

When I slept that night, the wide flat light cast the shadows of skeletons on the wall above my head. They danced and laughed, disregarding me, but still they frightened me. I tried to cover my eyes but the darkness was worse - large gaping mouths - I preferred the merry skeletons. It was a fever dream, perhaps, or a hallucination, but I cried and I was afraid, and I am sure I scared my mother with my talk of seeing dead things dancing above me.

I don't remember when I stopped being afraid of the things in the dark. Adulthood settled in on me. Reality settled in. I slept with the light on because I was more afraid of my real life. Something sharp under the pillow, a phone nearby. How could I be afraid of things that don't exist when a true monster lived rooms away?

I became frightened of other things. Of proving people wrong, of being disliked, of failing. Of people finding out that I slept with a knife under my pillow and I knew what red and blue lights in the dark look like. That I have struck out to defend myself ,and I have thrown bottles of pills at the monster that haunted me and taunted him to take them so I could finally be free of the fear and the humiliation and the constant constant wondering when the moon would rise full and he would turn.

Those memories are finally fading, though I will never be free of them. I can only build myself a new life, where these secrets are not my shame. Where I admit that I lived frightened like a small animal and yet I survived. I have a foundation around me and it is new but strong. I do not have to be the frightened girl anymore.

I drag them with me, now, fighting their pull. I make nine cakes in two days because I am scared to ruin a cake. I can't be the girl who can't bake a cake. I can't be the girl who fails at something so simple as a cake.

I shake my shackles and I pull harder. I pick up the paintbrush and the pen, I mix sticky resin in a cup and I spill it on myself and I smell like chemicals, but I brace myself and I push forward.

It is hard to be gentle to myself. I want to ignore the things I carry with me so badly. I want to sleep, comatose, until I wake and all my lessons have been learned, but that is not life. Life is messy and frightening and bloody and bright and brilliant and I will not move forward unless I let myself feel it.

So I cry into the pillow and the dog, I wipe resin off my pants. I tell myself it is okay to make just one cake even if it is not the best cake.

I blink fast to rid myself of the pressing urgency to be perfect, perfect and tell myself I have nothing to fear.