The Color of the Night

Recently, Indigo asked readers to share details about their relationship with the dark. I have thought that along with falling, fear of the dark is one of the fears that as humans we are all born with. Could I be wrong? Sure!! Still, my being wrong does not diminish how commonly held that fear is. A lot of people are afraid of the dark. Night is often used to convey menace and foreboding. No one ever worries about the things that go ‘bump’ in the light of day (but many times, they should!).


I have memories of being afraid of the dark but my Mother had a novel (if trauma inducing!) way of helping me to overcome that fear. There are two sides to that story, but I am going to stick to one side of it, the one that helped me overcome my fear of the dark.

A true fear doesn’t entirely disappear from a psyche. I think that you can manage them and use them for whatever you want. Have to be careful, though. Sometimes fear can galvanize a person and be the fuel that they burn for motivation. Or it can sit and become so unstable that when you try to inject it for combustion it gums the works, rendering the entire unit useless. Or even worse, it could cause an explosion that sprays out shrapnel as it inflicts collateral damage whoever is anyone in vicinity when it detonates. But the biggest thing about fear is how it can stop one from living their dreams. Because there was a lot of darkness around my youthful pursuits, early hockey practices, roadwork and newspaper routes, I would become seasoned by the early morning darkness.


Now with all of my various complications to my condition, fear is something that I can’t allow to get comfortable at all. So I go out late at night and train at nearest gym, which is a 35 – 45 minute walk from my apartment, just so that I can continue to repeat to myself that I ‘face my fears to live my dreams’. Still waking up before the sun to do my roadwork and passing shadows that could conceal the things that haunt nightmares (as well as dogs… which I have not seen running loose in Omaha so far). I haven’t told Nebraska, because I don’t want to feel compelled the ‘you do know where I am from, right?’ card. It really doesn’t matter where you are from as it does what you know, and I know two things about me -- I ain’t scared of no ghosts and I ain’t scared of the dark!!