The dark that holds

Most children are taught to fear the dark.

It’s not an innate fear; after all, I can’t imagine much light makes its way into the womb, that safe place we will never return to.

In bedtime stories, villains slither in the shadows, sneaky and sinister, and we soon learn to associate light with everything safe and darkness with everything that isn’t.

The astute reader might have already guessed that, in this story, everything will happen the other way around, while the curious reader will find themselves caught in the tight weave of my words, wondering: how?

Let’s start with when.

I was at an age when there wasn’t much difference between my vivid imagination and reality. I spent entire days observing the play of shadows cast by the long, slender fingers of trees on the white wall of my room. That white wall was my most precious resource: as a child accustomed to solitude, I nurtured it carefully with the help of that wall, which later was replaced by a sheet of paper. And there was my first detachment from light, more favorable toward its darker byproduct.

My house was full of white walls and shadows, long hallways without any furniture, rooms without doors, where anything could lurk behind corners. In short, we were dirt poor.

It was an old house, with heavy, creaking bones; silence was a luxury comparable to the food on the table every day. We were the haunting presences in that house. The adults who populated it were, to me, blinding lights casting the blackest shadows. They weren’t happy. Their unhappiness and dissatisfaction seeped into every corner of the house, like water rotting everything deep down.

Shadows were predictable; my mind could control them: I decided whether the end of a story would be tragic, happy, or left hanging. The light and shadows of the people around me, however, were frightening because they were completely unpredictable. Seeking refuge from sudden screams, from words whose tone I understood but not their meaning, and from the unhappiness that wanted to seep into my own bones, I sought the dark.

One of the few pieces of furniture in the house was a dark wooden wardrobe, imposing and, back then, I believed indestructible. Inside, a mixture of my clothes and my mother’s clung to each other in tight embraces. My favorite refuge was the last compartment of the wardrobe: inside, I found a hollow among the clothes that seemed to be made just for me.

Every child raised in an unstable environment learns to sense the subtle shift in energy that occurs right before an argument or a major tragedy. It’s an instinct for survival, for protection, a hyper-developed empathy that persists throughout life. I always knew when something was about to happen in my house.

And immediately, I’d go hide in my wardrobe, my stronghold. Darkness wrapped around me, a full-circle protection; the wood muffled the sounds, the darkness blinded me, and so, shut in there for hours, all my senses could focus on pretending nothing was happening. It was perfect. The darkness was perfect.

My family was too busy masking unhappiness with anger to worry about where I might have disappeared to, and if they knew where I was hiding, they had the decency never to let me know.

It was one of those days: from the morning, I had sensed the electricity in the air, the slightly high-pitched tone of conversations held through gritted teeth, and I knew for sure that someone within those four walls would explode. When I began to hear screams coming from the kitchen, I ran immediately into my wardrobe. Perfectly curled up in my spot among the clothes, I let my mind wander, imagining strange shapes drawn by the dangling dresses and coats.

I don’t remember the exact moment when I started feeling as though I wasn’t alone anymore. I remember the moment my mind stopped drifting and pulled me back with a long, cold shiver down my spine, heightening my attention on the space and pile of clothes next to me. My breathing didn’t seem to be the only one in there anymore.

While outside my refuge the screams were almost deafening, all I could hear was the dissonant sound of heavy breathing coming from somewhere beside me. Instinctively, I held my breath, confirming that somewhere inside that wardrobe, someone else was breathing next to me.

I had never truly been petrified by fear in my life; the turbulent nature of my family’s condition was something I was too used to fearing, but this... this was new.

That was when I discovered the difference between the fear of the known and the fear of the unknown, between the thin terror of something you know and the complete petrification in front of something you can’t see. Paralyzed, I instinctively spoke:

"Who's there?"

The breathing stopped for a moment, then resumed faster than before. I thought I glimpsed a crouched shadow near me, similar to my own in size, something that hadn’t been there before but that appeared at the corner of my terrified eyes as if it had always been there.

When the shadow moved, time started flowing again. I screamed with all the breath in my lungs and threw the wardrobe door open, searching for the outside and the light like someone about to drown, desperately seeking air. Outside my wardrobe, the adults rushed in, remembering my existence, perhaps grateful for an excuse to escape their own personal prison of accusations and recriminations to focus on me and my terror.

The wardrobe was turned inside out. My most sacred refuge, emptied of everything.

"See? There’s nothing. There’s nothing. That’s what happens when you shut yourself in the dark!"

For a long time, the house was calm. I was such a quiet, silent child that the explosion of screams and terror seemed to have completely altered the family dynamic. I was the center of attention; a few new toys appeared in the house, bought with great sacrifice to “distract” me.

From what, though? Even though my mind was already sharp enough to form the thoughts I wanted to express, my vocabulary was still too poor in words to explain that I didn’t need distractions, that I knew for sure that sooner or later, this honeymoon would end, that they would soon forget me and go back to old habits.

I had already seen many truces in those years; the only difference this time was that I had reminded them there was still a child in the house.

As I had imagined, this truce also ended. The electricity in the air returned, as did my need to find refuge.

The wardrobe stared at me, and I stared back, as I did every day by then, utterly convinced I hadn’t imagined it all. I spent entire days imagining; I knew the difference.

Driven by an invisible, unstoppable force, perhaps habit, perhaps curiosity, when the first shouts began to chase me from nearby rooms, I was already shut inside my wardrobe.

Darkness embraced me warmly; the piles of clothes were back exactly as before. Everything always went back to how it was before. I dug with my hands among the messy sweaters, recreating my favorite spot. And there I remained, waiting, my eyes fixed on an undefined point beside me.

My breath echoed like thunder, reflecting the wild beat of my heart. Soon, a twin sound joined it.

My forehead was covered in cold sweat; I held my breath, and the other breathing did not stop.

"Who are you?"

Silence. I stopped my breathing, and so did the other.

I felt something touch my hand; I couldn’t have moved even if I’d wanted to.

"I’m scared."

I let out this sentence, which I had never allowed myself to say to a single soul, and felt something grip my hand tightly.

"So am I."

Blood resumed flowing through my veins, my whole body prickling.

I squeezed the hand back, whatever it was that had grabbed mine, and when the heavy breathing resumed, mine was finally calm.