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.

Chronophobia - the fear of time

I turn the door handle and walk inside again. 

How much more suffering do I have to bare? The excitement I felt when I left still hangs in the air like the rising waves of a mirage, shimmering, whispering.

I counted backwards for months until I felt the wheels of the airplane leave the earth, 0 days, 0 minutes, 0 seconds. 

I did my penance, I paid for my crimes. I shut that door so triumphantly, victorious over time itself. I fooled myself into thinking I would not feel the crushing loneliness again. It slowly bleeds me out, weighs down on me like a million hands, pushing down until I can't raise my head.

A chill passes through me as breathe in the emptiness, 120 days, 5 hours, 23 seconds.

See, leaving is easy, running away is easy, escaping is easy. But coming back to the mess you've left, the hearts you've broken, the echoes of your tears? 

Leaving is easy; it's coming back that kills you.

Arsonphobia- the fear of fire

Every time the dream is the same. I see emerald grass, glistening with tiny glowing orbs of freshly fallen dew. The sky is so carelessly blue, so cloudlessly ignorant. The sunlight spills in liquid gold shafts through trees, thick with India green leaves.Vines creep leisurely up the gnarled bark of the trees. They sprout fuchsia flowers as big as teacup saucers and fill the air with a sweetly intoxicating scent. Huge butterflies, heavy with brilliant blue hue wing their way through the perfumed air. They perch, poised like dancers, on the flowers.

I walk through the trees, my bare feet sinking into the soft grass until I see the lake. It reflects the trees like an indigo mirror. Suddenly I am filled with an unbearable thirst. I run towards the still waters and reach my hand into it. It is not quite cold and the water tastes not quite sweet.

I lie down in the grass next to the lake and close my eyes. I hear birds trilling in the trees, the humming of insects and I feel a gentle wind stir the grass. 

When I open my eyes everything has changed. The lake is gone, only a concave space remains, brown earth, cracked from heart, parched. I look about me, confused. The world is on fire. The trees scream as flames lick through their green hair. The air is hazy with smoke and heat. I get up and stumble as I run, my lungs burning for air. The vines have fallen away from the trees and lay in ashes on the scorched ground. The heat beats against my skins, angry, vindictive. The grass is a carpet of blackness, a field of death.

I have done this; I have set fire to this place. Tears fill my eyes as towers of blazing red and fiery orange surround me. I cry because I feel so much guilt for destroying everything, because the smoke is burning my eyes and because a blue butterfly falls from the sky and writhes on the ground at my feet, the tips of its wings ablaze.

I wake up with the tears still in my eyes.

Noctiphobia- the fear of the night

Be a lamp, or a lifeboat, or a ladder.

Today I want to be a lamp. I want to find someone swallowed by darkness and I want to reach my hand out, offer them a light to see where they are, how to get out, and most importantly, I want to be the light that lets them see who they are, clearly, for the first time.

Today I want to be a lifeboat. I want to be a safe haven in the turbulent seas of life. I want to give someone a nights rest while the storm rages on, and I want to take them home, desperate and winded and exhilarated. I want to see their face as we reach the shore together.

Today I want to be a ladder. I want to help someone climb, to all the places they had never thought to reach. I want to offer them a leg up, the chance to get everything they ever wanted, to help them ascend out of the hole they have dug themselves into.

I’m going to be a lamp, or a lifeboat, or a ladder.

Maybe be because it is so dark and the waters are so deep and I can’t seem to be able to climb my way out.

Kenophobia- the fear of voids

I gather together the things that happen to me through the day, all the things that I am brimming over to share with you, and I store them away like shining copper pennies. I want to place each one of them in your open palm and see the way you smile at me and stroke my cheek with the back of your finger.

I keep them in my pocket until the sun sets, my eyes on the door handle, and then I throw them into the well and wish. I wish that tomorrow, that tomorrow you’ll be here.