I'm 19 years old and I'm afraid of the dark.

I am 19 years old, and I am afraid of the dark.

I’ve grown up with a generation raised on fear.  A generation restricted behind the thickest of safety glass for fear that anything and everything out there will harm us, take us away, kill us, rape us, steal from us, or lie to us. A generation where despite all of these fears and the precautions taken against them, the greatest of dangers usually lie within our own homes.

There was a small period of time where I was comfortable in the dark. I could let my eyes adjust and be on my way, not too concerned with turning on the light or moving as quick as I can. But now things are different.

I am 19 years old, and I am afraid of the dark.

The darkness – in the mindset that I (and much of my generation) have been put in – is a very scary place. In the darkness lies unknown. Not the unknown we wish to discover and explore; no. In the darkness there is danger.

The darkness turns the most common sounds into the most frightening echoes. The darkness turns the smallest of creatures into the most ferocious monsters. The darkness turns the friendliest strangers into the most ruthless criminals. Instances of minor phobias escalate to life-or-death scenarios. I’m a kid no longer. I should be past this by now. We all should.

I am 19 years old, and I am afraid of the dark.

Why have we been taught to think this way? Is the world really a scarier place, or is the previous generation just being too cautious? Do they understand what actually exists in the dark, or has the media skewed reality?

Remembering stories of my parents’ and the parents of others’ pasts, I find this all too ironic. As said before, the largest dangers often come from within our own homes. It’s almost as if the child-bearers of our generation took every conceivable safety measure against the outside world in an attempt to compensate. To compensate for their inability to protect us from the true darkness we live in every day.

But how can we stop it?

I am 19 years old, and I am afraid of the dark.