Nyctophobia

At night I lay in my bed.
Sometimes, I shut the lights off, and I think.
With my vision impaired, I begin to think and feel more.

I can feel the darkness 

It's like a blanket that hugs every millimeter of my body.
It can be a comfort, but at the time time, it makes me want to scream.
As a human, I fear the unknown.
And also as a human, I naturally cannot see in the dark.

When I just lay there, I can feel the darkness hug me in such a way that I feel paralyzed.
I move my eyes around, hoping to see light, to no avail.

My over-active mind likes to fill in the blanks in which my senses cannot.
I see everything that I fear.

Every little thing I have ever spent restless nights worrying about, is there before me.
The clowns, the murderers, the mythical horrors I remember hearing about around the fire years ago.
They're all there.
They don't move, they don't speak.
They just stand there, as I feel the terror build up inside of me.
I want to scream, I want to run for the light switch, but I am still paralizyed.
So I just lay there in terror until my body decides that it needs to sleep, and I fall into another nightmare.
I say I am afraid of the dark for these very reasons...

But think about it this way.

The darkness is merely a canvas that my mind paints.  And what it paints is controlled by my subconscious.

Maybe, just maybe...

I am afraid of me.