Childhood Nightmares By Ana Artz

 Prompt chosen: What are you afraid of?

Childhood Nightmares By Ana Artz

My current, and absolute worst fear is death, but honestly, I think that it’d be more interesting to talk about what I was afraid of when I was younger. As death feels more like a dripping anxiety for me rather than something I’m simply "afraid" of. It also doesn’t make for a rather entertaining personal essay. Up until I was about 10 or 11, I feared the most irrational things, situations that would never actually happen in real life. Needless to say, I had a wild imagination. Although that was a bad thing for fears, it led me to have a lot of fun as well. To this day I still view my imagination and creativity as one of my greatest strengths as it allows me to flourish in ways that others can’t. Sure, I would love to automatically be able to solve a complicated math problem and handle extreme data sets like a lot of my peers can, as that’s commonly viewed as more useful, but I love being different in the ways that I currently am.

Anyways, let’s get into my actual fears. As a young child, I mainly had 3 fears. Although the first two are the more interesting ones. This first fear was one that I had developed because of a short clip that I had watched on disney channel. I was going about my day casually— mind you I was around 4 years old, so I was probably playing with my barbies— when it came onto the screen. Partysaurus Rex, the hit 2012 toy story short. At first, I was encapsulated by this short film! It was about how the bathroom toys all wanted to have a party in the tub, however Andy wasn’t there to party with them, so they had to improvise by throwing a bath party themselves. I’m sure that the point of this was to show children that bathing is fun, but for me, that wasn’t the point that I took home with me at the end of the day. As soon as my head hit the pillow that night, a fear exploded in my mind, what if my toys wake up and unintentionally drown ME in my sleep with a bath party!? My nightmares for this fear primarily consisted of a dimly lit still shot of the bathroom, which to present day me is quite humorous.

My second fear also has to do with water, interestingly enough I was never afraid of water itself, as I always loved swimming, just the things that managed to accompany it. This one came from a thought one day I had while showering, which now seems kind of ridiculous. I had thought to myself, “What if I get transported to the african savannah with an elephant watering me instead of a shower head if I close my eyes? Leading me to have to walk butt naked all the way home to the US?” You can clearly tell how intellectual I was back then, because yes, of course that would happen to me. Yep, it happens to everyone all the time! So whenever I would be showering from that moment on I would have at least one eye open, even if I had soap in my eyes. 

This third fear wasn’t so much a real life fear but rather a dream-like one. Sometimes I would find myself drifting off after a bad day and immediately waking up in a pile of sweat. Why? Well that’s because I would have this dream, or I guess nightmare in which there would be these colorful cubes on a conveyor belt flowing along, until they get interrupted and caught up on the belt. Becoming these mushy, unfavorably textured blocks. I don’t think that I was necessarily scared of this, but it simply rubbed my brain the wrong way, leading me to believe that I was scared of them. 

 I think that it's interesting looking back at how scared I was of things that had virtually no shot of ever happening. I never really thought to sit and think through the possibility of these things. For example, I don’t know of many cases in which someone drowns in their sleep, much less a case where their bath toys may have caused it. Thinking about it, I never even had any bath toys, so I don’t really know why it was a top priority fear. As now I am still a person whose main worries consist of things that have a miniscule shot at happening. Like all of my friends turning around and hating me one day, or losing all of my teeth because I forgot to brush them that morning. After writing about my fears to see what connected them all, past and present, I sensed that it was all about lack of control. My true fear is that I will lose the small ability I have to control the little things in my life. As the larger picture is already far beyond my control.

Questions/Suggestions for Feedback:

How can I better introduce what my actual fears are? Everything feels a little abrupt right now. Is the third fear even necessary?

Is the section where I talk about how I’m thankful for my strength (Albeit it was a weakness when I was

younger) necessary? If it is, should I move it or keep it in the same spot?

Am I repetitive anywhere?

I have too many words, about 250 too many, where do I cut?

Do I add in more reflection?