Confessions of my Fears .::A short story extract by Kaffy Mwangi from the Story Confessions of my Nyctophobia::.
©
Kaffy Mwangi
I would wake up in the middle of the night
and I would gasp for air,
My hands would shake
my whole body was in a fit.
You would hear my heart beat so loud,
loud like a train grinding on its rails.
My shrink said it’s just paranoia,
Just trauma wound itself in the figment of my subconscious.
It would get so bad my parents got me an inhaler,
thought I was asthmatic.
They covered me up in more blankets
said the bad dreams will go away.
I couldn’t breathe at night,
my pupils would dilate,
I was in a fever, hot and sweaty
you could trace my veins to the heart
Yet goose bumps cropped from every follicle.
‘’you know when you are drowning; you actually don’t inhale until you black out.
It’s like no matter how much you are freaking out the instinct not to let any water in is so strong that you won’t open your mouth until you feel your head exploding, and when you do finally let it in, that’s when it stops hurting; it’s not scary anymore ,it is actually peaceful.’’
But not this.
Every night I close my eyes
and the fear….
The fear is worse than drowning,
I don’t hear them break into my house,
I don’t hear them get in
Then blips of light grow,
In the dark they glow,
brighter than dawn.
I can’t move ,I can’t see.
My eyes interrupted from sleep
can’t stand the bright light.
My heart beat is too loud
It gets lost in its own echo,
Everything is a dull sound
I can’t hear a thing
I cant see anything
Just blurred shapes and figures
voices that are not clear
everything had either dimmed or slowed down.
Well,
I’m fine now.
Aside from the not sleeping
the jumpiness,
the constant overwhelming crushing fear
that something terrible is about to happen.
They actually have a term for it.
It’s called hyper vigilance,
It is the persistent feeling
of been under threat.
But every dusk, it’s not just a feeling,
It’s like a panic attack,
like I can’t breathe
like I won’t breathe
like I’m drowning.
My friends say I move in with a friend.
Its not like I will always live with them,
nor like I do not try to have people here for sleep over’s,
Still!
It doesn’t take this fear away,
till I can sleep with the lights switched off
till I can sleep till dawn without waking up
to every squeak and raffle
I will never be better.
I close this doors every night
and it’s like I am locked up in some asylum
with green lights.
always scared,
afraid of the unknown,
always under that persistent threat.
I would wake up in the middle of the night
and I would gasp for air,
My hands would shake
my whole body was in a fit.
You would hear my heart beat so loud,
loud like a train grinding on its rails.
My shrink said it’s just paranoia,
Just trauma wound itself in the figment of my subconscious.
It would get so bad my parents got me an inhaler,
thought I was asthmatic.
They covered me up in more blankets
said the bad dreams will go away.
I couldn’t breathe at night,
my pupils would dilate,
I was in a fever, hot and sweaty
you could trace my veins to the heart
Yet goose bumps cropped from every follicle.
‘’you know when you are drowning; you actually don’t inhale until you black out.
It’s like no matter how much you are freaking out the instinct not to let any water in is so strong that you won’t open your mouth until you feel your head exploding, and when you do finally let it in, that’s when it stops hurting; it’s not scary anymore ,it is actually peaceful.’’
But not this.
Every night I close my eyes
and the fear….
The fear is worse than drowning,
I don’t hear them break into my house,
I don’t hear them get in
Then blips of light grow,
In the dark they glow,
brighter than dawn.
I can’t move ,I can’t see.
My eyes interrupted from sleep
can’t stand the bright light.
My heart beat is too loud
It gets lost in its own echo,
Everything is a dull sound
I can’t hear a thing
I cant see anything
Just blurred shapes and figures
voices that are not clear
everything had either dimmed or slowed down.
Well,
I’m fine now.
Aside from the not sleeping
the jumpiness,
the constant overwhelming crushing fear
that something terrible is about to happen.
They actually have a term for it.
It’s called hyper vigilance,
It is the persistent feeling
of been under threat.
But every dusk, it’s not just a feeling,
It’s like a panic attack,
like I can’t breathe
like I won’t breathe
like I’m drowning.
My friends say I move in with a friend.
Its not like I will always live with them,
nor like I do not try to have people here for sleep over’s,
Still!
It doesn’t take this fear away,
till I can sleep with the lights switched off
till I can sleep till dawn without waking up
to every squeak and raffle
I will never be better.
I close this doors every night
and it’s like I am locked up in some asylum
with green lights.
always scared,
afraid of the unknown,
always under that persistent threat.
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