Darkness

My heart felt funny..not exactly painful...No,No...it was not pain but discomfort...felt like chest tightness..suddenly I felt unwell, like my whole world was caving into me..My heart was beating extra fast...lup dup lup dup lup dup.....My doctors friends would have diagnosed me of having an angina ( heart attack) but I knew it was not that....I was not having a heart attack, I was having a panic attack!

Never understood why until I began to talk to a friend. She said something like..."Feli, I can sense that there is a lot of fear in you!". Fear??? Mua?? The fearless woman?? My family and friends could testified  that fear was not in my blood....Asked them, asked them how I faced the world, how I faced the dying, how I faced the nature...Fear...HAH!!! Funny woman...gently she said, "I think you are fearful of darkness."

Darkness...Darkness...Why? Why was she saying that and so sure of it? Was it true?? It couldn't be true.Then I knew....this feeling, the panic attack happened only at night when I was alone in the room...in a big big house...not knowing what was looming at the coridor..and it happened everyday!! Perhaps it was just a fraction of my imagination...

I was trying hard to think...why should I be afraid of dark...I was definitely not afraid of dark back home or was I? Was it because KL was always fill with sounds and noises that I had never been 'alone' at home. Perhaps the sound from tv or radio drowned the silence..perhaps I stayed up real late and then went to sleep before I could feel fear. Did I always switch all my lights on when I was at home...Hmmm.........To think of it, I was always uncomfortable in the dark from a young age..but who wasn't??? I assumed everyone was not comfortable in darkness...why should I be any different?

She said..look back into your childhood and try to find out when you started to be fearful of darkness....wow! My friend was not even a psychiatrist...do you have the image of me lying on a couch in front of a psychiatrist and started relating to her about my childhood??? We were just talking sitting cross legged on a mat...but then something in me stirred...

To be honest, I was so tired. I was exhausted! I had not been sleeping well for the past week. Every night when I went into my room, I had this panic attack. I heard things at night. My mind refused to shut...my eyes were close but not my mind...my heart would race...I just couldn't sleep. The next day, my exhaustion set in and I would  be lifeless...I was suppose to come to CM to rest..and that was the last thing I was getting....perhaps if I could just deal with my fear face to face...perhaps then, I could sleep ...

OK dear fren, let's just do it...I began to think, to recall the things in my past....a lot of memories came flashing by...she asked me to concentrate on those time or events  that gave me chills and fear...I went through phases of my life when I was young...times when the western doctor said there was nothing much they could do to improve my polio...times when my parents were so desperate to cure me..they tried everything...slowly pictures of darkness came in....yes...my mom or dad would take me to see medium or bomoh...and many times, the room were very dark...I felt my heart skipped...I was kinda transported back when I was a child...held unto my mom's skirt in this dark room, clutching to her...the sound , the smell, the darkness...the fear...pictures of those statues...the dark- faced statues...their grins, their laughters, their eyes...always looked angry and ugly and scary.....darkness again...fear followed...

I could see a helpless child holding unto her mom, asked to go home...just wanted to leave...but mom said it was our hope to cure you...I wanted to leave, I wanted to stay, I cried in silence.....suddenly I could feel my tear dropped, I was sobbing, I was crying ...for my past and my present...the past and the present were interconnected....I was sobbing...and my heart felt the pain...

My friend was silence all this time, then she said, "come let's pray for you...let's just let go of the past...you have to forgive your parents....surrender everything to God and get your freeedom!"

Forgiving my parents was easy, they done it out of love...they wanted me to be able to walk like other children..they hoped someone, somewhere could cure me.."Mama, Papa, I forgive you....God please please take away this part of my deep seated memory. Liberate and free me from the torment of darkness...take away the pain, the fear.."

I entered my room last night without that fear...i dun feel my heart ache anymore...although I did not get a good nite sleep, it was not because of my fear from darkness...darkness has no hold in my life anymore..I'm free...