Who's Afraid?

Who's Afraid Of The Dark?

By:

Dale A. Wittler

We are all born out of the darkness of our mother’s womb. Like some self contained spacecraft, it was our first real home. It gave us nourishment through a tube like embilical, provided warmth, and protection from a hostile exterior environment. We grew inside it until there was no more room to expand our horizons, and so we were expelled into a harsh light so blinding, and cold that it caused us to cry with our first drawing breath. And so, out of that life giving bath of darkness, we became beings immersed in light. We soon forgot how welcoming it had been to just keep our eyes closed, and experience life through the muffled sounds of an alien world mere milimeters away on the outside. In fact, as time passed, we began to fear what we once knew as a life sustaining darkness, and transformed it into a nightmarish place noone wants to explore again… So, tell me, how did we learn to fear the dark?

I wake in a cool sweat, my heart pounding like a freight train; throat bone dry, and lungs drawing huge gasps of air like I had been swimming under water for an extended time, and distance. There is a fading sense of impending doom leaving my body, and my mind begins to resume a normal pace of a typical afternoon. This is fast becoming a new norm for a person who has known the drone of third shift life after most folks turn in for a long nights rest. It is curious indeed, and a mystery only many years of experience can reveal as a genuine sleep disorder.

I remember as a kid coming home from elementary school, and my brothers, and sisters gathering in front of the television set to watch Dark Shadows. As if Barnabus Collins wasn't enough to scare the bezeesus out of you, there was nothing like having to use the bathroom during a commercial break, and needing to make the long trek down the hallway to relieve oneself. Yes, I mention this because that's when my fear of the dark made itself truly known to me, and the time we made our own haunted house in the basement. I will never forget my oldest sister, and the “white hand” glowing in the dark under the staircase.

Funny how sleep can be taken for granted in a world constantly at war with itself. I remember sitting behind a small green box lit up with ivory colored subscriber lights, and the slight hum of a power supply fan motor during field training exercises in Germany. There isn't much to do when you're a ninteen year old private first class manning a telephone switchboard after the generals have called it a day. Even after a change of scenery puts him on an air base somewhere the hell in Honduras, it's still the same game, a Cold War existence.Years don't change a man except when he has been up for nearly thirty six hours straight, and a National Guard captain keeps wondering why his switchboard operator keeps dosing off, even while standing up on both feet. Believe me, there is nothing more surreal than waking up half way to the floor when your body says“ Give me a break, will ya?”

So, what does this have to do with the inevitabiliy of growing old, and the fear knowing life ends in darkness just like it began? Well, again, experience is the best teacher. Over countless hours carrying a flashlight around a kind of half way house for wayward boys, I learned to embrace darkness as a means of security. As long as the kids were in bed, I didn't have to worry if one of them began to act up, and a fight would break out. I never liked sitting on top of a thirteen year old who was having an episode of “I can't deal with the reality that life stinks, and I can't cope effectively with my anger issues.” Yeah, I was one of those crazy individuals, who when backed into a corner, was forced to handle the conflict I always tried to avoid at all cost. To this day I hate dealing with the fueding frenzy this world has become so addicted to.

And so, this journey continues. After twenty years of marriage, divorce, child support, and living in exile for nearly five years, I find myself in a mid-life life crisis of epic proportions. Health Care is all the rage as I have entered a guantlet of repeated doctor visits, blood work, and issues related to that dreaded walk to the bathroom. Funny how it all comes back to you in spades. And thusly I return to a new kind of fear, the reality of knowing a lifetime of dreams, both good, and bad, are cut short by a broken mechanism inside my brain that keeps turning the light on, and off at random. After a ten hour shift at work the night before, I have been asleep, and awake at least three times since 8 am Eastern Standard Time. Almost as funny as “The Clapper” I live a commercial in my head that isn't the convenience of a modern labor saving device. I realize that it's not the blood sugar, blood pressure, or cholesterol that will kill me, it's the darkness, and comfort of a warm place to sleep that will inevitably end it. So I blame economics, the health care industrial complex, and my own broken brain as a means to deal with the fear only God in heaven knows how to heal.

The End Is Near