On the Courage to Look Your Fears in the Face

When I was eight, our family moved to a new apartment, closer to the gymnasium where I’d just started school. It was an ordinary two-room flat: my parents slept on a fold-out bed in the living room, and I had my own room that doubled as my bedroom. We didn’t renovate right away — we lived with it as it was. The apartment had an old wooden floor of lacquered brown boards that creaked a little when you walked across them.

At first everything was fine — I was settling into the new place. But one night I woke up to the creak of the floor, and it seemed to me that someone was walking through the apartment. Someone who didn’t belong there… I lay under the blanket, frozen with fear, my pulse shooting off into space, my heartbeat so heavy I could feel it in my eardrums. Fear pinned me down — I couldn’t move, couldn’t think straight. Pull yourself together… Think! Who could it be, and what do I do?

After an hour I started to realize that the floor was most likely creaking on its own — probably from the difference between the daytime and nighttime temperatures. I felt a little calmer, but the anxious fantasies wouldn’t let go. I fell asleep.

Since nothing bad had happened, I didn’t share any of it with my parents — maybe I didn’t want to look foolish, or maybe I just didn’t want to burden them with my problems.

But the next night it happened again. And the night after that… It went on, with breaks, for about two weeks. I was sleeping worse, carrying a constant low hum of anxiety — and yet on the level of logic I knew perfectly well that there was no one in the apartment at night, that the floor creaked as the room cooled, and that all the fear lived only in my head. I learned there were special doctors who treat this sort of thing, but I still couldn’t bring myself to take the situation to my parents. I made myself a vow to figure it all out on my own.

One night, when I woke up again, I decided to dare to get up and walk through the whole apartment, whatever it cost me — even if it meant dying. Easier said than done! On shaking legs, flooded with adrenaline, I took the first steps. Then a few more… I left my room, made it to the living room, to the kitchen, checked the hallway. No one was there. Only the floor, creaking under my feet in the night’s silence, which felt absolute.

I never woke up from that fear again. I beat it by looking it in the face. I filed that night away on the list of my childhood traumas, and to this day I’m proud of the courage I showed.

“There are more things likely to frighten us than to crush us; we suffer more often in imagination than in reality.” — Seneca

In adult life, the situations that frightened me through uncertainty only multiplied: trips to the doctor, waiting on test results, summonses from the inspectors, hard negotiations, public speaking, and plenty more. But every time, I told myself: I managed it back then, so I can manage it now too!

Here’s to the courage to look our fears in the face — and to beat them! 😎