1. i am blogging.
2. i am watching the second episode of game of thrones.
3. i am live tweeting it.
but this post isn't about game of thrones, or even about how i went shopping with my grandmother and i found this butt ugly shirt by jennifer lopez that i bought for eight bucks, because why the hell not?
today i'm going to attempt to blog about how i'm afraid of the dark. because i am afraid of the dark.
so when i got home from work this morning my parents were out on a bike ride and my brother was at his job, so i wandered around my house in my swim suit and i showered with the door open and the lights off.
my room filters light into the bathroom. it saves energy.
i also listened to my music super duper loud and my spotify radio was totally on point. and i danced and it was pretty legit.
when i got out of the shower, i went to turn down my radio, which i keep on the toilet tank, and i noticed something.
this.
WHAT UP, FROSTY THE SNOWMAN NIGHTLIGHT?
i honestly didn't remember this thing existing. like, when did that get there?
then i realised that this litle beauty has been in my bathroom for six fuggin' years. just in this house.
the light bulb has also been burnt out that entire time.
after i stared at it for a while and i eventually decided it would be a good idea to dry off my hair and put on clothes, i remembered when it burnt out like, a week after we moved into our new house.
me: DAAAAAAAAD OUR NIGHT LIGHT BURNT OUT
my dad: FIX IT
me: I DON'T KNOW WHERE THE LIGHTBULBS ARE
my dad: I'LL GO GET SOME AT THE HARDWARE STORE
guess who didn't go get some.
so we've had a burnt out light bulb in a frosty the snowman nightlight holder for... six years.
that's a really long time, kids.
good old frosty guarded our bathroom from night demons in our old house. we had one before him, some fancy one from someplace like bed bath and beyond, and then my mom decided that she was going to try something new.
seasonal bathroom decorating.
(so far the seasonal bathroom decorating has only worked in our half bath downstairs with hand towels. we have a turkey one. i have no idea where she got it.)
and thus frosty came into being.
he was a legit nightlight. i mean, i was like... five.
but remember how it was supposed to be seasonal decorating?
my mom is the queen of seasonal decorating. we have seasonal flags that we fly off our porch (sadly not the union jack) and seasonal wreaths on our door and just general seasonal stuff in the house. easter and christmas are always the best.
but my mom was not so good about seasonal decorating in our bathroom. frosty came in at christmas and hung around for a good ten years.
and then he moved with us. and went right back into our bathroom.
when we were little, he was definitely needed. my brother was a night peer (pee-er? peeer? is that even a word?) and i liked to get up to... well... vomit. (that makes it sound like i did it purpose. i just puked a lot when i was little.)
it's like i can't vomit during the day. so all the time when i was little i'd wake up and be like, oh look it's puke time and i'd try to make it to the toilet. (once that didn't happen. to the sink i went.)
the nightlight definitely helped with that.
and it also helped with my terrible fear of the dark.
i've been afraid of the dark as long as i can remember. and now that i'm technically an adult, it hasn't gotten any better.
you know how at camp you go on night hikes once during the week? yes? no? maybe that was just at my camp?
well at my church camp we went on night hikes in the corn field. because it's indiana. and we're nothing but corn fields. anyway, we'd wait for the sun to go down and we'd take a guided night hike with a counsellor and we'd stop in places and do games, like how much more you could hear at night.
someone would stand with their eyes closed and someone would try to sneak up on them. as soon as the standing person could hear them, they'd hold up their hand and see how far the sneaky person would get.
i was always way too anxious to handle it. i was the sneaker. (and of course i failed.)
we also chomped on mint lifesavers and they'd light up in our mouths and we'd pretend that we were eating fireflies.
and we'd stop and stare at the stars. they were so vast and beautiful and i could never quite catch my breath.
yeah, my camp was pretty badass.
but i was always terrified of night hikes. i'd dread it all day. i always picked a girl from my cabin that i was particularly close to and we'd be night hike buddies.
which meant that we linked arms the entire hike.
the last time i went to camp i was sixteen.
guess who still had a buddy and i wouldn't let go of her arm? yep.
when i was in elementary school i got this really cool lamp for christmas. it had five flowers and each one was a different height. their centres lit up and they were each different colours. (i had that lamp until i was like... nineteen, by the way. it was totally lisa frank-esque.) its lights were pretty dim, but bright enough that i wouldn't be scared.
so i used that as a nightlight until i was at least fourteen.
whenever frosty burnt out and the bathroom light wasn't on and i couldn't see it from the hall, i'd get scared. my dad always had to replace the bulb.
i also had to get a twin bed when i was twelve because having a double bed was no longer a thing i could handle. i'd always picture opening my eyes to the other side of the bed and seeing someone lying next to me, someone that had gotten into my bed with me in the dark.
don't even get me started about what i thought was under my bed.
it's common knowledge that i've never seen nineties TV shows like most normal people my age. i did get to watch some cartoons at my grandparents' house in michigan when i was little, and i've seen a few episodes of rugrats. i know enough that chuckie is afraid of everything except the dark. when tommy asks him why, he says, "you can't see all the scary stuff."
i feel like that's really intense wisdom or something.
BUT THAT IS EXACTLY WHY I AM AFRAID OF THE DARK.
it's like when you see a spider. and you're like, oh shit, it's a spider. but you can see it. you know where your enemy is.
then the little bastard disappears and you're like, NOOO WHERE IS THE EFFIN' SPIDER I AM GOING TO DIE.
(unless you're my brother. but he's the spider dude.)
this is how i feel about the dark. it's concealing all the bad things. i'd rather just see them out in the open.
darkness is also this big bad metaphor about fear of the unknown.
well, you're right. i'm terrified of the unknown.
i don't know what i want to do with my life anymore except live in england for a while, and that terrifies me. both not knowing what i want anymore and moving to a different country.
i don't know who i'm going to marry. i don't know where i'm going to end up. i don't know what's going to happen in my life, if it'll get expontentially better, if it'll get expontentially worse, or if it'll just pretty much stay the same in terms of awesome experiences and trauma.
all i know is that i'm getting older and the world is becoming bigger and smaller at the same time.
i am twenty-two years old and i am still terrified of the dark. but i've been trying to combat it.
for reasons unknown, i've felt the need to prepare myself for a life of blindness, so i occasionally shower with the lights off and fumble around in the bathroom in complete blackness. i can't do it without music to keep me calm. i also climb rock walls blindfolded, but that's mostly for the challenge. i also sometimes go downstairs for a midnight snack and i don't turn on the light.
which is scary as all get out.
i haven't had a bathroom nightlight in six years. when i get up in the middle of the night to pee, i'm sometimes afraid of my own reflection when i turn on the light because i can see it looming toward me in the darkness. (insert life changing metaphor here.)
do i have a nightlight in my room at home? do i have a nightlight in my dorm room at school?
yes and no.
although i don't actively have an awesome nightlight like ancient frosty the snowman making sure that i'm safe at night, i do have light that enters my room.
i sleep with my shades open. i live behind a hospital and a chocolate factory. the light from both of those buildings lights my room at home sufficiently enough for me to sleep comfortably.
the past two years i've RA-ed in the same room and there's a street lamp right outside of my window. my junior year at alma i got through the entire year without closing my curtains.
so yep, i'm still really afraid of the dark. i've just found a cheap and energy efficient way to have light in my room without actually having a nightlight.
you know, this post got kind of deep, what with all the metaphors about life and darkness and the unknown and me being like, by the way, did you know that i was terrified of waking up to people and mosnters next to me in my bed to the extreme that i had to get a twin bed when i was twelve?
sorry. it wasn't meant to go with this way.
but as my friend adam says, "we don't intend to do a lot of things in life."
so, until this next post, i'll just pretend to be an adult who notices how big the world is while at the same time, notices its shrinking.
and to end on a happy note, game of thrones was ridiculously awesome and my mother and i giggled rather uncontrollably at khal drogo's glorious ass.
dat. ass.
(for recent game of thrones tweets, see @emilyyxh on twitter. hurry before the tweets are completely buried in my other pointless tweets.)
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