Glow in the Dark

Note from Jen Pastiloff, founder of The Manifest-Station. This is part of our Young Voices Series for Girl Power: You Are Enough. We are always looking for more writing from YOU! Make sure you follow us on instagram at @GirlPowerYouAreEnough and on Facebook here.

By Cristy Shaner

For the first twelve years of my life, I went to bed afraid. As a child I was always squinting at shadows, searching for something sinister in the dark, feeling certain that soon I would be hurt, irreparably and forever.

I was afraid to close my eyes because I believed something might reach out and touch me when I wasn’t looking. I only succumbed to sleep after hours of staring at the ceiling, and sometimes not even then. Occasionally I would stay up until pale daylight broke through my bedroom curtains, and then, finally feeling at ease, I would rest. I knew, on some level, that my fear was nonsensical, but that didn’t stop me from fearing. Instead I kept quiet and clutched terror to my chest like a treasured secret—I was all alone with it, and that was all I knew. I grew up believing the world was a dangerous place, especially when plunged into darkness. I dreaded the unknown for so long it became a force of habit: everything was either a threat or a trick.

I fall asleep in the dark easily now, but I rarely sleep through the night.

I had a dream recently, that I stood in a long hallway lined with doors, and behind each door was something terrible. It felt very important that I reach the end of the hallway, but first I had to open each door and face what was on the other side. Behind one door was a pile of immaculate corpses, dressed as if for viewing. Each dead face was smiling, and for some reason I felt I had to pose them like mannequins. Behind another door was a girl who belonged in a teen drama, glossy and mean, and she made me say every terrible thing that came to mind before she would let me leave. Behind another door was a girl who looked like me, crouched on the floor and grinning wickedly as she brandished the scissor blades that had replaced her first two fingers: snick snick. She cut my hair violently, and it fell in voluminous piles at my feet.

I never reached the end of the hallway.

Shadows don’t scare me anymore, but sometimes when a man passes me on the sidewalk I feel certain he’ll push me into oncoming traffic. This is, of course, nonsensical, but it doesn’t stop me from being afraid.

I had a dream once that I was hanging by my ankles from the ceiling of a wide, white room. A man stood in front of me, but he was perpetually turning his head so that I could never see his face. He held a knife to my throat and I knew he didn’t want to hurt me—but it had to be done. He slit my throat and blood rushed out of me like a flood, covering the floor and rising in waves. I felt nothing as I watched the blood pour out of me, but I was sorry for the person who would have to stitch up my throat before I was buried.

When I was twelve, my sister’s room became mine, and for the first time in my life I had a bedroom belonging only to me. All along the walls she’d used glow-in-the-dark glue to scrawl spirals and hearts and the names of her favorite bands and early crushes. When I turn the lights off after a long day, the words Grateful Dead gleam yellow-green in the dark.

I had a dream once, in which I watched myself run down a hotel hallway, desperate to reach my room. I watched myself stagger and weave, hair flying behind me. I couldn’t see my face, but I knew what I was thinking as I ran: It’s supposed to hurt less. Now that I remember, it’s supposed to hurt less.

For years I grieved the loss of something I couldn’t name. For years I felt like a guest in my own body. For years I avoided mirrors. For years I felt like a puppet with its strings cut. For years I wouldn’t look a child in the eye.

I had a dream once that I was walking along the side of my house, where the grass gives way to dirt and an ant hill is always thriving. A man I’d never seen before walked towards me, and I flinched because I knew if he touched me something terrible would happen. I screamed, and woke up kicking viciously at the air. For a minute I was sure I had called out in my sleep, and that at any moment my brother’s door would open and he would ask me what was wrong, that I would hear my parents’ footsteps from down the hall. I laid in bed in the dark and waited. No one came.