2aguy
Diamond Member
- Jul 19, 2014
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- #41
Spot on, that's the "problem" in a nutshell. Incidents like this don't happen in the UK, because our gun owners tend not to be frightened of shadows and prone to over react.
Mom: Daughter mistaken for intruder by father, fatally shot
This woman is terrified......but in Britain, she just has to suffer.....
I try to recall through my panic the things I have done to mitigate the chances of an attack: the locks all double bolted, the keys taken out and placed far away so that if a person smashed through the glass they couldn’t easily open them. When I was terribly afraid one night I took a small sharp knife and hid it in a secret place accessible from where I sit in my bed. I can take it out without making much noise. There is another creak from the hallway, and I silently retrieve the blade from its hiding place and hold it in one hand and my phone in the other. I sit there like this, rigid with conviction and terror, for more than an hour. No thoughts pass through my head in this time apart from keen listening for the next noise and what direction it comes from, strategising my escape. Can I be sure they are coming from the area I think they are, or could they be coming from both sides? Is it wise to lock myself in a toilet? Am I strong and small enough to break through that window if necessary?
Eventually, I accept that I am too frightened to move to check whether someone is outside my bedroom door one way or the other, and that the elapsed time means that it is unlikely they are there. I put the knife back in its place and turn on the two lamps on either side of my bed, and a podcast so that it might sound to somebody outside that there are several people in this room. I lie back down and practise some breathing exercises to try to sleep. It’s now perhaps 4am and I have lost half of my allotted rest. I am useless and angry when I wake up, aware of the absurdity of my fear and that I have allowed it, by indulging, to ruin my day.
This happens two, three, sometimes four times a month. Twice as many times as that I am woken in the middle of the night with dreams that somebody is entering my window or sitting on my bed, terrors which are both more and less intense because they are unconscious, but which mean just the same that my sleep is robbed and fragmented, my body feeling as if it has been through a battle when it wakes in the morning.

I love living on my own – so why am I so scared of the dark?
Megan Nolan always dreamed of having her own lovely home. But now terrifying thoughts keep her awake at night. Here, the author wonders why