Agateophobia- the fear of insanity.

It is too silent. A silence so loud it is everything I can do not to scream. I don’t know why I am so afraid to be alone. Maybe because when I’m alone I start to think. That little voice that I keep dormant with noise and chatter suddenly begins to speak.

Maybe it’s because that little voice starts to whisper unwanted truths into my ear. Maybe it tells me that life is passing me by, that I have not become the person I set out to be. Maybe it reminds me of failures I had forgotten. Maybe it asks me why I am still alone after all this time.

Maybe it makes me think of the disappointment in my father’s eyes. Maybe it murmurs of all the chances I was too afraid to take. Maybe it speaks of friends that turned their backs on me, loves that broke my heart, and battles that were lost.

It tells me that there are no second chances for the weak, it tells me that I can never live up to the expectations that are accumulating on my doorstep. It whispers that it is okay to surrender, the ends are not worth the means.

‘Give up,’ it hums, ‘just give up.’

Optophobia- the fear of opening one's eyes

My mother sits me down, her eyes so full of concern. She tells me that life is hard, things are always difficult, it’s an uphill battle. My heart aches as I look at her lined face and swollen eyes. I wonder how things can go so wrong, how someone can love you one day and forget your name the next. I put my cold hand on her warm one. She warns me to be careful, to guard my heart, to build walls, set defences for the heartbreak that will surely come.

For just the smallest of seconds I am afraid, I doubt myself, I distrust the way I feel so powerfully. I suddenly curse the way I love so uninhibitedly, so utterly and without reservation. I fear for the way I give my heart away without thinking twice.

She looks into my eyes and I swear she can see my fear because she smiles and gets up. I see the sadness she carries in every pore of her skin, in every beat of her heart. Before she leaves the room she tells me one last thing, the most important thing she has ever told me:

‘Nothing is ever easy…except in love. When you are in love, everything is easy.’

Melophobia - the fear of music

I wait until the rain has stopped, until the urgent knocking on the roof has subsided and the world around is silent. I press play and stand in the middle of the room, my eyes closed. 

The song begins and in those soft notes, I can almost feel the grass against my skin, I see the stars, tiny pinpoints of light in the darkness. I feel your body next to mine, the rise and fall of your chest, the promises you whispered into my ear, your fingers laced through mine, like a secret in the night.

I imagine me, in a white dress, my arms looped around your neck, your hands on my waist while these familiar words swell around us. I want to think I will look up at you and smile, I’ll whisper to you that when our children pull out our heavy photo album, I will tell them that it is the weight of my happiness that they feel. And when they trace tiny fingers over the edges of the pictures, I will tell them how that was the smile I wore on the happiest day of my life.

That night on the grass, under the stars, life was just starting, everything was light and love. I think of how things have changed, but how much I still want to live and die with you, to this song. I imagine candlelight suppers with my hand linked to yours under the table, midnight swims with our laugher filling the still night air and slow Sunday afternoons under the covers with my head on your chest.

The song ends and I stand for a moment, absorbing the reverberation from my thoughts. I try not to imagine that way your skin felt, the way your lips tasted, or the tears in your beautiful brown eyes when you said goodbye to me.