What's the scariest thing you've ever seen? As a mother some of my most terrifying images are not of things that have actually happened, but of those moments of potential. That breathtaking, heart stopping moment before something happens. As of yet, luck has held us in the potential, and events have turned in such a way that we have managed to avoid calamity. But even now, more than ten years removed from some of those incidents, the imagined vision of what might have been still holds the power to quicken my pulse and cause a sharp intake of breath.
I write "as a mother" but I could easily write "as a woman." Because women are in the unfortunate position of being witness to some of the scariest things. I write that with the idea of war in my mind. I know. Men are most often the ones who go to war, who witness killings and death up close and personal. But if you have lived in the scariest things part of the world, you know what's most often horrifying doesn't come with the chaos of battle. It comes in bright sunlight, when you are least expecting it. It creeps in stealthily with a slow motion that gives you enough time to imagine the most frightening outcome and all the ways you are powerless to stop it. The scariest things freeze you in that dream state where screams are never voiced and moving with any sense of speed or control becomes a futile effort. The scariest things leave you lingering in that haze long after the day has dawned and dreams have been put to bed.
Sometimes the scariest thing you've seen hasn't really happened. You just wait in anticipation of it. Every moment rigid, every second tense, caught in a perpetual 'flight' mode. Because everyone knows you never escape the monsters in a dream. The only thing you can do is just wake up. And if you're already awake?
