I am afraid of the dark

I think when I'm really stressed, or scared I revert to being childlike. It's irrational and downright silly.

Yesterday, Chris and I spent a splendid day wandering around the flower market, we went out for a late brunch on Columbia road, lazed in the afternoon and I spoke with my mother for 2 hours which was really nice as we had only emailed back and forth for the past few months. Not too indulge too many redundant details but we made this rather delicious salmon pasta with a garlic and onion cream sauce (and by we, Chris made the entire thing whilst I sat entertaining him with jokes...).

About 8pm last night we start watching the film Doomsday by the same guy who did the Decent (his name escapes me now...) and I handled myself rather well because it wasn't really scary at all. Plus I was on good form making jokes throughout (another way to numb my fear now embedding itself). So movie over, a full 2L bottle of Diet Coke half consumed. Next.

Amityville Horror is on television (the original not the remake) which I have seen at least 15 times but haven't watched in the past 5 years lets say. My friend Sharon and I in highschool became really interested in the story and spent an afternoon researching at the library these alleged 'true' events. Theoretically, I shouldn't have been scared at all, but I was so freaked out last night. Branson and I have come to an agreement that if our children ever say they have imaginary friends, they're being given up for adoption, or sent to boarding school, or sent to live with their grandparents in Canada. Basically they're going to stay the fuck away from mummy and daddy.

Then Chris tells me that when he was about 3 years old his mother asked what he was doing one day when he was playing on the floor and she said he was talking to the people in the skirting board. I just glared at him and asked why he had to tell me that. This is information that I am not handling well. Ok so bed time now.

I won't get into our bedroom without him and he still has to brush his teeth. I just stand at the back of our bathroom and watch his routine, my heart is actually racing. We pour into bed, it's now about 12.50am. I'm tossing and turning and can hear my heart beating against the mattress. And I have to take off my pj bottoms because I'm now sweating. And I'm not allowing myself to fall asleep because I know I'll have bad dreams. And Chris doesn't fall asleep because he's afraid he's going to wake up at 3.15am and hear banging (in the movie, the characters keep waking up at that time). Eventually I fall asleep about 3.30am only to wake up 10 minutes later after having a terrifying dream (in my dream, I ask someone for directions and they want me to give them a dollar, then in my dream, but I think I'm awake, I start yelling Honey Honey wake me up and I can feel my body shaking). I then actually do wake up and cling to Chris for dear life. We both then fall asleep only to wake up to 7am alarm and feeling ridiculous.

Chris just called me on his lunch break to say that he was so scared last night too and that his only comfort was me spooning him at 3.30am when he could finally let his mind rest. Funnily enough, during my conversation with my mother yesterday, she was saying there was a growing trend in new build houses where couples are having two master bedrooms built so they can sleep separately. Now I thought that was heinously tacky and not a marriage, to live in separate bedrooms and see each other in communal spaces. I think Chris and I have come to an absolution; never ever will we leave each other's sides whilst sleeping. I don't know how I coped for those 23 years.

I have zillions of stories of being scared, alone, in my room at night. Futhermore, I used to sleep in the basement at my mum's house (that's where the guest bed was built in the mid 90s) but my parents made me move back to my room upstairs when I used to sleep walk and got my self locked into the cellar one night, only to have my parents hear me screaming and having to come rescue me. In all fairness, I probably scared my parents more than I scared myself.