A Week Alone

It was noon as I got out of bed ready for another slow summer day.  The xbox like a hummingbird in the corner of my room, and the sun glistening through the trees onto my bed.  I was excited today, but also a little nervous.  My parents were heading to our family camp in upstate New York for the annual county fair.  I had started a job over the summer, and I couldn’t spare any vacation.  I was sad that I would be missing the fair, something that I had never missed, but I also felt a cool and quiet sense of independence.  My parents said goodbye with loving hearts and started off.

I returned home from work that night forgetting that my parents weren’t around.  It was an odd feeling.  I had stayed home alone many times, but never in this capacity.  I slowly entered my house.  My parents had taken all of our dogs with them on the trip, so it was truly just me and the house.  It was black as oil, the rooms, they were silent.  The wind coming over the mountain sounded like a hurricane, and the crickets in the grass, like sirens blaring.  The snap of light switches erupted as a ran upstairs to my room. Immediately my house came to life, rejuvenated from its long afternoon nap.

For a long time I sat in my room, playing video games, and watching Netflix without a care as to what was happening.  After midnight I was fatigued from work and the long evening of recreation, so I decided to go to bed.  It was impossible.  The silence was deafening.  I lay there in my dark room.  I became paranoid and frightened. The darkness was like a black portal manipulating itself in my mind, and becoming the dark shadows of my greatest fears and nightmares.  It felt like there were cold metal walls closing in on me as I tried to slow my speeding pulse, but it was no use.  I feared for my life, of darkness and sleep.  I felt alone.

The next morning I opened my eyes and looked around.  Again the sun shone and the xbox hummed.  Everything was the same as before. In the light I felt rejuvenated and courageous, like I was a new being, a new me.  I had survived.  Now was the question of how I would again return to the deep dark as a fighter, not as a coward.  I would face fear head on, and be changed forever.

Over the week the nights got easier.  I was more confident and felt safer, like I had built up a wall of tuning things out.  It was like a utopian sphere, that dispersed the darkness, and allowed warmth to radiate inside.  By the final night I was completely unafraid.  I had been vigilant.  The darkness was gone.