As children, we seem to have no fear. Somehow I managed to hold on to that fearlessness, along with some form of naievete that accompanied it, well into my adult years. I wish I had it back.
I love being outdoors. Or at least I used to. When I was in high school (and sometimes in jr high) I would sneak out of the house and wander around, walking through the neighborhood in the middle of the night. Sometimes I'd go to the 7-11, or to the nearby playground to sit and stare at the stars. The darker it was, the happier it made me. I usually had a notebook and pen, a bottle, or both with me. Occasionally I'd meet up with someone, but I was most often by myself. In the suburbs just outside NYC. In the middle of the night. And noone knew where I was. In retrospect, not my brightest idea.
In college when I got the urge to go a'wandering, I'd head out into the woods behind the main campus. Down the hill behind the student center to the gazebo, across the stream, and if the water was too high to step over on the rocks, there was a water main pipe several feet above the stream that you could walk across on if you had good balance. There were a couple of paths from there. One led to a clearing part way up another hill towards the guys dorms. Another one led aways down to an old rusty metal bridge (part of the top was missing) left over from when the school had an ROTC program years before that crossed another stream. If you were brave enough to cross, you ended up in the intramural fields, across from the practice field for the marching band where I spent many many hot afternoons. If you turned and followed the stream, though, it led down towards the river, and there were lots of places in the woods there to explore, and swim, and have secluded cook outs or camp fires. I had several friends that joined me on walks through the woods and braved the water main and the bridge, but it was pretty much all during the day. At night was when I'd go alone. Even after I was married, because he would be stuck in a practice room or at a rehearsal for some show or another. Not nearly as often, but it did happen.
It continued with Army life. When NBS was in basic, I would go walking, trying to get exercise, but my sleep cycle was off pretty bad, so I would end up going at night. It never bothered me. In California, I went walking at least an hour every day. Our house was not far from an area with alot of abandoned housing, so that was where I would go alot of times, even walking through there at night. The street lights still worked, so it didn't bother me. I did usually have someone that walked with me at night, and when I was by myself I went in the mornings most of the time. The point is that I didn't feel afraid to go by myself at night when I did go.
Then we moved to Texas, and he went off to Korea. For the first time in my life I was actually living on my own. I had struggled with panic attacks and depression at times before then, but most of that had been due to doctors misdiagnosing conditions in college and putting me on medications that I should never have been on. I honestly don't remember alot of my last three years of college/first three years of marriage because of it. At some point during the year by myself, I started remembering things. Things that happened a long time ago. I never allowed myself to fully remember, but what I did was enough. I couldn't sleep at night. Not because I missed my husband so much, but because I was terrified. I went to bed with a farrier's hammer under the pillow next to me and a bb gun rifle on the floor next to the bed. The doors all had double locks, there were floodlights on front and back, and the alarm was set all the time. I couldn't bring myself to open the back door and take the cat litter out after dark. I was irrationally paralayzed by fear.
It took awhile, but I was able to work through it. I definately didn't go out much after dark by myself when I was living out in the middle of nowhere, AZ close to the border. That had just as much to do with the spiders as anything, though. I will readily admit my arachnaphobia. Since I've been exercising regularly again the last couple of months, I have been doing alot of walking outside. Alot of it was in the rain at first, but it has begun to get absolutely beautiful here now, and I'm really enjoying it. My sleep cycle has been really off, though, so I've been getting to my exercise later and later, and I didn't want to go walking in the dark. In order to get in all the required steps for my pedometer, I was walking in circles in my living room, which is not very satisfying in the least. Plus, it's such a confined space that the turns were doing weird things to my leg muscles. So, the last two nights I went walking.....outside. I didn't go as far away as I would go during the day, as not all of the street lights were working and I don't think that being brave necessitates being stupid. But I did get in the exercise I needed, more actually, and I felt good. And not afraid.
