CONQUERING MY WORST FEAR

Since I was young, I have always had trouble with getting to sleep. As strange as it sounds, my biggest struggle has always been falling asleep when everyone around me are already lights-out. I think it has something to do with the quiet and the feeling of being the only one in the world still awake. It’s not that I have a fear of anything particularly tangible, just a sense of uneasiness which I find hard to shake, making it difficult to relax and drift off. I have never been one to stay up until the early hours of the morning, but the actual process of falling asleep just never seems to come easy to me.

In my first year of uni this became less of a problem as living with eleven others (yes, really) there was rarely a time when the whole house were asleep before I was. However, I am now in a lovely house of four and the issue, shall we say, is back with a vengeance. I can be completely exhausted from a long shift at work but the moment I hear the rest of the house become quiet, my mind decides that nope, it is definitely not time for sleep after all. Despite it being 11.45 on a Sunday night. It definitely, categorically, does not help that my room is at the back of the house meaning no noise from the street and is complete with a wonderful view of the local funeral director’s yard from my window (yes, REALLY). However, after nine months I must admit, that factor doesn’t really bother me anymore.

This small inconvenient struggle of mine is not really that much of an issue in the grand scheme of things, following a short inward battle of ignoring the fact the house is silent, I am usually fast asleep by 11.30pm at the latest. However, this small bump in the road, if you like, has become the gateway to another, considerably larger problem. Sleeping on my own in the house.

So, now I have set the scene, and considering my genuine uneasiness of quietness when people are IN the house, I’m sure you can imagine my complete and utter despair when there are no people in the house at all. And at night, my god, this is my worst nightmare. Until recently I had somehow managed to swan along, cunningly avoiding ever having to experience this terror, by forcing kind and loving friends to stay over and keep me safe from the quiet, or staying at other kind and loving friends’ houses when I knew I would have otherwise been, dare I say it, home alone.

I feel it is important to add at this point, that at the age of 21 I am not proud of nor pleased with this inconvenient inability to be alone in a house at night and I have many times tried to will myself into going it alone for the night just to prove that I could do it. I even googled ‘how to not be scared of being home alone at night’. During the day, I more than enjoy my time alone, it is just when the evening nears that I start to feel like the end of my life is nigh.

Following a reassuring conversation with a group of friends about the horror of sleeping in a house alone at night, I realised that I wasn’t in fact alone in this fear. Pretty much every single one of the girls I was talking to revealed that they too hated the thought of being home alone. One informed us all that after a week of being home alone, she was a nervous wreck, and another revealed that her boyfriend was coming over when we left, to accompany her for the night because she too didn’t want to be home alone at night. Well it’s fair to say that after this educational conversation, I felt considerably better about the whole thing. So much so, and knowing full well that all my housemates were due to be away later that week, I made a pact to myself to quash this annoying fear once and for all.

And that I did.

It took me two attempts. The first night of being home alone I ended up on a night out, and faced with a slightly drunken walk home to an empty and dark house, opted to crash on the sofa of my friends. However, the morning after I headed home determined to make it through the next night alive. Being due to start my week’s work experience the next day my main concern was being in such a stress about being home alone that I wouldn’t sleep at all and would miss my 7am alarm and my week (and life) would be considerably ruined.

Luckily I had work that night which broke up the evening nicely. Despite discovering that the entire top floor power had blown and having to reset the fuse box in a rush to get to work, I was determined that nothing would ruin my new-found bravery.

I headed back from work to find the house exactly how I left it. A truly excellent start.

I was actually surprised with how fine I felt being in the house and quickly discovered I had made the whole situation into such a bigger deal in my head, that the thought of it all was 300 times worse than the actual experience itself. Putting myself to bed I felt cool calm and collected. Having fallen asleep pretty much straight away I woke up bang on time with the feeling that I could take on the world. I had survived my worst fear, nothing had happened, I had not died in my sleep out of fear, everything was just fine – just like every single person in my life had told me it would be, although this advice had fallen on very, very, deaf ears.

I realised through this experience that the fear of doing something is more often than not far worse than the actual thing that is being feared itself. Facing this annoying, niggling fear made me realise that it really is possible to force yourself to get over something, and as soon as you do it is no longer present.

Now I no longer feel trapped whenever my housemates are away and I have no available friends to run and hide to!

#homealone #worstfear #conqueringfear #adulting