The Silverbloggers Chronicles #23. Fears

During my childhood, I experienced many fears; my family had a knack for instilling them in the minds of children.

These fears were cultivated in a rather subtle way, for example, the fear of the dark. In reality, they never explicitly told me that the dark hid evil beings or strange creatures and things like that; they didn't say that. It's not that they told me directly that there were bugs that came out at night, far from it. But in everyday conversations, intentionally or not, they always dropped some idea where evil was associated with darkness.

From hearing these things so often, my fear of the dark grew to the point where it was impossible for me to leave the house at night. I would see shadows outside the house and imagine creatures lurking around to do harm. I held on to that fear for a long time, and I think I began to overcome it when I started my own family. I had no choice; things had to be done in the dark of night, and I had to do them.

Another fear that was common in my family was of strangers. There were specific threats; we were told, for example, that we had to be careful of crazy people. I don't know if there were many crazy people on the streets at that time, and I never knew what my parents meant when they talked about crazy people. I don't know why they thought crazy people were dangerous. It was actually quite irrational.

In my childish mind, an association between crazy and strange was established; for me, they were the same thing. Any strange person I saw on the street frightened me; I thought it might be one of those crazy people they always warned me about. This was one of those fears that was difficult to overcome. It lasted until I started to make more friends and realized that most people are good people.

I was also afraid of cockroaches. That was a little strange because there were never any cockroaches at my parents' house, but there were at my grandmother's.
My grandmother's house was very nice and close to the sea. We all liked going there, and I loved swimming. During the day everything was fine, but when I went to bed, the problems began.

I always had to sleep in a room that faced the parking lot. It was a nice room because you could see the night sky through the window, a view I've always loved. However, there was a big problem with that room. Cockroaches were always flying in.

Sometimes I was asleep and woke up with the feeling that they were walking on my sheet. That feeling scared me a lot, so I would close the windows, which increased the temperature in the room until the heat became unbearable. But I preferred not to see the night sky and wake up with my sheets soaked in sweat as long as the cockroaches didn't come in through the windows. I still find cockroaches very repulsive.

Nowadays, my fears have changed. It is no longer the dark, strangers, or cockroaches that cause me fear. Now what scares me are economic issues. In my country, we have been experiencing an economic crisis for many years that has been difficult to overcome. This affects us all, but especially older adults who have less energy for work.

For people like me, the jobs that are available are very poorly paid, but as we say in my country: that's the way it is, and it's best not to think about it too much.

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Thank you for your time.

Translated with DeepL.com (free version).

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