The Eight-Year-Old Who Feared the Dark, and Me at Lights-Out

My thumb is still resting on the switch.

Eleven twenty. I have brushed my teeth, plugged in my phone, drawn the curtains. One movement left, pressing down, and half a minute has gone by with my finger not pressing. In the hallway there is a night lamp the size of a fist, plugged in low against the wall, and I cannot remember when I first left it on. The bedroom door always stays open a crack so that its yellow strip can slip in.

I am thirty-nine, a site supervisor, and by day I walk along towering scaffolding without blinking. Yet every night it goes the same way: once my finger has pressed the switch, I have to glance through the crack to check the strip of light is still there before I can close my eyes.

Tonight I tried something different. I did not force myself to give up the lamp, and I did not make fun of myself. I sat down on the edge of the bed with the room light still on, and asked the eight-year-old who keeps hold of that finger what he wanted to say. This is not an exercise to stop fearing the dark, and I am not promising where it leads. It is only a conversation, written down almost exactly as it went.

Me-at-eight: Do not turn everything off. Leave the lamp out there.

Me-now: I am leaving it. I have never turned that one off.

Me-at-eight: But I can see your finger just standing there. What are you about to do?

Me-now: Turn off the room light. Only the room. Let me check: what are you afraid of? Tell me.

Me-at-eight: The mosquito net at Grandma's. Every night she let the net down, turned off the light, and went out. There is a jackfruit tree in the yard, and its shadow falls through the window onto the net. When the wind blows the shadow sways back and forth, as if someone is standing outside shaking it.

Me-now: I remember. The smell of half-burnt mosquito coil, the gecko clicking its tongue on the ceiling. Some nights I even heard slippers shuffling in the lane, and then stopping in front of the gate.

Me-at-eight: Yes. Stopping right in front of the gate. I held my breath every time.

Me-now: And then the slippers went on, right? Back then I did not know it was the man next door coming home late from work.

I stayed on that line quite a while. Not because I was moved. Only because for the first time I saw how much I remembered, down to details so small I could hear the slippers again, when all this time I had thought I was "just a little scared of the dark."

Me-at-eight: Are you going to laugh at me?

Me-now: No. At eight, anyone would be scared watching a tree shadow sway across a net in the middle of the night. I only want to know: this room has no net, no jackfruit tree. So what is still here?

Me-at-eight: The moment when someone goes out, and the light goes off.

Me-now: The moment Grandma went out?

Me-at-eight: Yes. I was not that afraid of the dark. I was afraid of being left alone in there with nobody knowing I was not asleep.

Neither of us said anything for a while.

I sat there, listening to the fridge downstairs run and cut out. A motorbike passed the end of the lane, its headlight sweeping across the ceiling and gone. I realised I had never asked my finger what it was waiting for. It was not waiting for the strip of light. It was waiting for somebody to know I was still awake.

Me-now: I am here. I know you are not asleep.

Me-at-eight: Really? You are not going anywhere?

Me-now: Nowhere. I am only turning off the room light, I will be lying right here. And the hallway lamp is still on, you can see it.

Me-at-eight: Yes. I see it.

The conversation stopped there. I pressed the switch. The room went dark, and the yellow strip on the door showed up clearer than on any other night. I did not feel suddenly lighter. But my finger was no longer standing around waiting, and I lay down with a hand on my chest, listening to myself breathe for a while, and I do not remember when I stopped listening.

If you want to try this, I only changed one thing from what I did that night.

The first time I did it, the ten minutes were quite awkward, and the two lines I wrote sounded fake. A week later some people find the answers ring truer, and some still feel they are acting. Both are normal. If you still feel awkward, drop the writing, remember one detail and lie down, and that is enough. If you like two voices talking to each other, the one with things to do and the one who is tired is a different conversation, about unfinished work.

People tend to slip by trying to settle the fear that same evening, fixing it all in one go while they are at it. It is tempting because it feels like progress. But an eight-year-old does not need fixing. He needs to be heard and to know somebody is there. If you finish listening and feel heavier than when you started, stop there for the night, and do not dig further. If something needs to go on paper before you lie down, writing three lines before the lights go off is a lighter way.

One thing to say plainly: if your fear of the dark or of being alone is heavy and lasting, so that you cannot bring yourself to lie down alone or panic most nights, then talk to someone with the right training. The conversation above is only one way I sat with myself, and it cannot replace that.

The hallway lamp still comes on every night. I no longer see it as a weakness. It is a place where somebody stayed.

Allow yourself to leave one small light on.