Childhood Fears: Finding a Friend

Fear starts with a threat we think we see: a spider on the wall, the edge of a high ledge, a stranger at the door, an empty house at night. Each of us answers it differently. Some bolt, some tuck themselves away somewhere small, some square up and face the thing head on. Whatever the response, the feeling itself sits close to the center of how we move through the day. And one of the better ways out of it, in my experience, isn't a technique at all. It's a person. The right relationship can pull you toward the world instead of away from it, and curiosity and nerve tend to follow.

For a long stretch of my early life, fear ran the show. It touched almost everything I did. I grew up an only child, and my parents worked hard to keep relatives close, hoping the house would feel full and warm. Two cousins came by on holidays, and those were the good days. We'd wander off together and treat the whole neighborhood like something to be discovered. Then they'd go home. They never stayed the night, and once they left, the old feeling came back. Alone in the dark, a floorboard settling or a branch against the window was enough to set me off.

There was a second problem on the days my parents were out. The neighbor's children had a habit of watching for an empty house, then pouring in to hunt for snacks or anything that might keep them busy. Their family was large, as many as ten kids some days, and in all that commotion something always got knocked over or carried off to play with. My mother told me to keep them out when no adult was around to watch. So I'd stay inside by myself, keeping the peace, which only left me alone with the quiet again.

Evenings were the part I waited for. My happiest memory of that age is my mother coming through the door with fruit and cake and small treats tucked in her bags. I liked being near my parents, liked helping with chores once supper was cleared. Then the sun went down and the fear showed up on schedule. I'd search every corner of my room for spiders or anything with legs that might find me while I slept. I checked under the bed too, half convinced someone could be folded into the dark down there. That one wasn't pure imagination: a thief had once slipped into our house and hidden in a shadowed spot before anyone caught him, so a dark corner felt like a reasonable thing to distrust. When the lights finally went out, the fear peaked, and every sound inside and outside the walls turned into a question I couldn't answer.

Storms were the worst of it. Thunder cracking overhead, lightning throwing the room into sudden white, and my mind filling the gaps with a burglar who'd pick that exact moment because the noise would cover him. I couldn't fall asleep until the rain quit. When a storm dragged on through the night and into morning, I'd spend the next day exhausted and hollow.

I told no one about any of this. But my mother must have read it on me, because she started inviting my cousin to stay during the stretches when I seemed most on edge. We went to school together, to church, to the store for groceries. Pretty much everywhere, side by side. I think that was the thing that finally loosened fear's grip. When something scared me, we'd sit with it, talk it through, and usually end up laughing until it didn't seem so large. She'd stay next to me through whatever I'd decided was too dangerous to try alone.

Running around outside, taking the small risks I used to avoid, I found some courage I didn't know I had, and with it a steadier sense of who I was. For me the way through wasn't a method or a trick. It was one good relationship with someone my own age who kept nudging me toward the world, who stayed beside me while I tested where my limits actually were, and who turned the scary parts into adventures worth having.