There is a place, in my past, where I kept out the monsters in my mind with electrical fences and barbed wire. They gnashed and writhed as they would press unformed hands and tendrils against the metal of the fence, and the electricity would squirm out of the frame like maggots in the eye sockets of someone recently dead in the hot summer sun. Later, half a man, I realized that the fence didn't keep the in, so much as it kept them out of the section of sane space in my mind where there were things to keep me safe, like search lights from lighthouse towers, and tea with my mother, and the thought that one day I won't die alone and young due to alcohol because I never liked the stuff anyway. But one day, as I sat in my cell writing a short piece for a magazine, I felt myself turning off the electric fence, and climbing that lighthouse on the side of a very high and black cliff and smashing the bulbs. I would walk out onto those shingles of rocks under the cliff face and there they were, bubbling and reaching for me from the dark dark water, darker and colder than the space between stars. They pulled me in, and I embraced it, and I drowned and was swallowed whole...I saw stars.
The next day, I began to write more, I wrote a book, or an eighth of one at least, in a matter of hours and found myself enthralled by what I could achieve with my newfound comfort of mind. The rocky beaches beneath the cliff weren't so bad, as there were many tidal pools for me to explore, and sea weed and walking sticks were abound and the ocean was rich with sweet tasting fish and mollusks that all tasted amazing when roasted over a fire and served with just a dash of garlic and butter. I was only afraid of the unknown, I was afraid of what was beyond that fence I built around myself and what dwelt beyond it deep in the electrified water. But there are no monsters in the sea, not for me anyway. I still have fears, tornadoes, being eaten alive, heights, but nothing compared to my fear of the unknown. But nothing compares to what I feel know. Comfort in my skin, comfort with my damaged mind, and when I dream of falling through twisting vortexes and being swallowed alive I come out unscathed and undigested the next day, alive and in my bed under the morning sun.
Fear is a powerful tool, but Beyond the Fear, is something even greater and more powerful. Comfort. Hope. Courage. Love. These things inspire and drive rather than destroy and dominate, and only when we see our fears for what they are, only then can we live.
They looked like stars in the sky, but the blackness was what I saw, velvet blue and warm to the touch on that December night. But only with light, can I appreciate the dark.
"The most powerful emotion of man is fear, and the oldest and most powerful kind of fear, is fear of the unknown." HP Lovecraft
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