Slice of Life

I felt paralyzed. Why do I have an aching sense that someone is under my bed? My eyes dart to the closet. Did I just see something move? No, no one is there. Or is there someone in the shadows? I am gripped by fear. I want to hide under the covers, and close my eyes, but I can't look away. Why did I watch that movie? How could I have thought it was a good Idea? I know it's all in my head, but I can't help but feel like if I look under my bed, I will be killed by some evil menace that lurks there, in the dark. The image of the ghost girl Samara, from "The Ring" crawling out of a television is ingrained in my mind. The face of the ghost from "The Grudge" also haunts me. I can't shake the feeling that I am about to receive a call saying I have seven days to live, of that I am going to be kidnapped by Jigsaw and he will want to play a game, or I will fall asleep and Freddy Krueger will kill me, etc.

My third grade self knew that monsters and ghosts and demons weren't real. But the movies sure made them feel real. I had a completely irrational fear, but that didn't make it any less terrifying. I also had a curiosity that drove me to watch movies like Saw, the Ring, and Blair Witch Project. When I was in second grade, my older brother convinced me and Daniel to watch the Grudge, a movie about a mother and son who die and kill people who enter their former home. We got five minutes into it, and the first scare scared me and Daniel so bad we probably screamed, and had to turn off the TV. After that, I downright would not go into the attic, and I never went upstairs alone. Later, in the third grade, I saw "IT". It was written by Stephen King, and was super scary. It's about a clown that lures children into a revine and eats them. I barely slept for three weeks.

If I had not seen as many horror movies as I did when I was young, I would never have had these fears. I was not ready of it - I wasn't able to push it out of my mind, or deal with the fear. however, that went away with time. I learned to deal with horror movies, and I was able to make them less scary for me by thinking of positive things, and thinking to myself how unreasonable my fears were. With time, I could watch almost any movie, with no lasting effects. It was jus about the timing - if I hadn't been exposed so early, I wouldn't have had night terrors, or fear of the dark, or being alone. The times when I was so scared I couldn't sleep were some of the roughest experiences of my life. The fear is so intense, it almost feels like physical pain. In the fast year or so, I have watched movies like "Paranormal Activity,"  and "Insidious" with almost no trouble at all. Whether my experiences that made me able to reach that point made it worth it, I do not know - I probably should have waited - but, I think movies just gave me a reason to be scared, and night terrors as a child are relatively common.