Our theme for the month of October is “childhood fears.”
When I was an adult, I was scared of being alone.
Not forever alone in a relationship sense (some part of me, thankfully, notices I’m only 24 and chooses not to fixate on that possibility) but in a physical, much more basic sense.
A couple of summers ago, in my family’s home, my roommate and I were the only ones living there while my parents and little sister traveled to California. I was doggedly working to afford my new car, while my roommate (and good friend) was slogging through grad school and dating her now-husband. When she told me they were planning on a couple of weekend trips during this part of the summer, I stopped, surprised by the huge wave of resistance I suddenly felt.
And then I told her something I’d never had occasion to tell another human being up until that point: I was terrified of spending the night in a house alone.
This had its roots in a brief but intense bout of phobia that I had experienced in high school, centering on murder and death. While it has not seriously disrupted my life since, some very real vestiges remain: I try to turn on the lights before I walk into a dark hallway or room. I check behind the shower curtain every single time I walk into a bathroom. And I get jittery when there’s not another human being in the house with me, especially overnight.
It’s a strange result of having a series of great college roommates and a family that was able to be physically present through my time in Grand Rapids, but I was just used to people just being—well, there, or at least on the other side of the house when I fell asleep at night. Add to that the timing of my mental health crisis during adolescence, and I was experiencing this strange paradox of experiencing some fears much more intensely as an adult than I’d ever had opportunity to as a child. This included fear of the dark, fear of some imaginary “monster” or threat out there… and, of course, the subsequent fear of falling asleep in an empty house.
That summer, my friend heard me out, and thankfully gave me a good dose of her characteristic gentle practicality: she pointed out that my life aspirations involved living overseas, probably for a long period of time, and very possibly as a single woman. What were some strategies I could try to get through these couple of weekends?
So I planned—social events, little outings for myself, setting structure to the empty hours at home. (Yes, I also turned on every light possible as I moved through the house at night.) This past summer, I did the same in that house for an entire week. It never became fully comfortable, but I got used to it—even finding moments where I found I enjoyed the additional solitude.
So, fear conquered? Maybe. It certainly doesn’t mean I’d want to live alone all the time. Once, on a date, the boy I was seeing and I both admitted that a big reason we each wanted marriage was that we feared we wouldn’t do too well alone. We each felt that we would go crazy in a house by ourselves with no one else to provide structure.
I have no idea how legitimate this thought is as a motivation for lifelong partnership, but it definitely felt comforting to have it in common.
So, yes, I am 24 and still afraid of the dark. And no, please do not ask me to dog-sit in your big, empty house anytime soon.
Some things that give me the jitters may never fully disappear. But, I know the edge of fear can be dulled, and its thoughts and symptoms managed—it is not too foolish to hope for victory.
Grace Hsu graduated from Calvin in 2025 with a major in speech pathology and a minor in English. A phonetics nerd outwardly but a poet at heart, Grace currently resides in Taipei, Taiwan, where she teaches English at a language school. Apart from writing, you can find her reading, running, and eating inordinate amounts of Thai coconut curry.
