A lot of people are afraid of the dark. I mean really, it isn't an irrational fear. For most people, it starts when you're young and gradually dissolves as you get older. Like when you're 3-years-old and you think there are monsters under your bed so you have a solar system night light plugged into your wall. Or when you're 8-years-old and you have your mom keep the door a little cracked when she leaves the room after kissing you goodnight. For most of my friends, it was gone at least by age 11. Middle school seems about the age, right? You think you're the boss because you just left elementary school and you're moving up in the world, right? For most people, being 20-years-old and still relatively afraid of the dark isn't really normal; but for me, it is.

As long as I can remember I've had a pretty regular fear of the dark. Up until the light burned out at age 7 (I think, you'll have to check with my mom) I had a moon shaped night light plugged next to my door. Then all throughout middle school, I kept the light on in my closet while I slept. The door was shut so it wasn't much but the small sliver of light underneath, but it made me feel safe and secure. It almost made me feel like I had nothing to fear; nonetheless, that relative fear of the dark never really went away.

I have begun to think however that the fear I have of the dark isn't really about the dark itself. The fear, as I've discovered through 20 years of darkness, isn't that the lights are out but what I can't see in the dark. Every night before I would go to bed I'd check my room. Not necessarily for monsters like when I was little but for something that made me feel unsafe. You see, I have never truly felt secure in the dark. I check my closet before I go to bed unsure as to what I would do should I ever find anything; however I continue to check it anyway.

I suppose if I ponder what I'm looking for long enough it could be chalked down to murderers or thieves, but on a deeper level I think what I'm looking for is something I can't explain. It's the fear in general that comes over me that makes me check my closet every night. Fear that should I be attacked in my sleep I would never get to tell my mom thank you and I love you ever again. Fear that I would never get to hug my sister again even though she always resists my affection. Fear that I'll never again get to see the friends I've had since I was four at our annual Christmas party. I suppose it really comes down to that what I'm looking for in my closet is fear of not having fear any longer.

I'm not 100% sure how one can look for fear but as I'm thinking about it with an open closet in my bed at 1 a.m. on a Saturday night, I think that the fear I'm looking for is the courage I get from falling asleep. By falling asleep and letting myself be overcome by the darkness, I'm overcoming my fear. By looking for the thing that terrifies me most in the closet, being ripped away from the people I love, it helps me to overcome my fear of the dark.

While I still believe that I may never feel fully safe when the lights aren't on and that I may never go to sleep without searching my room and closet for the things that scare me most, I can say that I am OK with being afraid of the dark. While it may terrify me that once it's completely dark there might be a chance that it will never be light again, that's a chance I'm willing to take. I'm willing to take a chance on the dark because there's some things worth taking chances for. The people that were once friends that I now consider family, the family that I consider a part of me and who I am and the people I have yet to meet; they're all worth taking a chance on the dark.

Regardless of if it scares me, I will always fall asleep in the dark at night. Not because it is necessary for me to live as a person, but because as Albus Dumbledore once said, “Happiness can be found even in the darkest of times, when one only remembers to turn on the light." So with that being said, I accept my fear of the dark because it makes me strong, it makes me human and it makes me realize that without darkness one can not know light and a life with no light is truly no life at all. Therefore, when it comes to my fear of the dark, all I need to really know is Lumos.