Dear Mom and Dad,

Hey guys! I want to tell you about my fears. This is because I want you to understand. I also want to thank you greatly, but I’ll get to that later. You know what my fears  are. I want to further explain them to you.

You know I have many fears.  I’m scared of spiders, bad grades, death, being alone, and murderers.

My fear of spiders is pretty small. They don’t scare me that much. I just don’t like how disgusting they look.

My bad-grade fear is childish. The only reason they scare me is because I don’t want to disappoint you guys. I’m 100% serious.

Death scares me because I don’t want to die, and I don’t want you guys to die either. I haven’t lived a full life yet, and neither have you. I want you to live a full life of happiness, and I want to live a full life of happiness myself.

I’m scared of being alone. Why? It’s probably something to do with my extrovertness. I like people, I like attention, and I like interacting with people. They are the heart and soul of me. I cannot survive being alone. It hurts. I feel endangered, scared, vulnerable. I'm insecure, I second guess myself, I cry and scream.  I know I’ll grow out of it, but right now, it’s as real as I am.

My final and largest fear is murderers.  I want to explain. For some reason, starting maybe two years ago, I became scared of death. A year ago I became scared of being alone. One thing lead to another and I became scared of murderers. It’s not, sadly, a petty fear. I can list

Every.

Single.

Person.

who has tried to kill me. The men and women dressed in black, the insane people whose eyes roll around and around and around, the porcelain dolls, the ghosts, the shadows of things too scary to see. I can list all the reasons they’d want to kill me, every bad thing I've done.  I can tell you where they hide and how they get in. Under my bed, in my closet, in my walls, around me, over me, in me. Through the windows, the doors, the walls. I can replicate the noises they make. The coughing, the walking, the breathing.

I remember one time I was lying in my bed thinking and I saw the light flicker outside. My nerves erupted. I waited for what felt like an eternity. Just when I calmed down, it flickered again. I waited another minute and it flickered again. And again. I started getting really scared, thinking there was someone looking in the window. I started thinking how it might be a distraction. Someone might already be in the house, maybe they’ve already killed my parents. Or maybe they killed my sister first. Wait! My room is next to my sister’s room! They’ll kill me next.  Then I heard footsteps. Footsteps above me, on the third floor. They went down the stairs. They went down the hallway. They walked to my door. They stopped. I waited for my door to open, for a gunshot or a knife against my throat. For a voice, a shadow, a creaking floor board. Nothing. I clutched my knife under my pillow, my face white. I wanted to scream, but I knew they would kill me if I did. The light had stopped flickering. The night was silent. I sat there, thinking about how I would die. Why I would die. Where I would die. My vision started to go black at the edges. I started seeing Things, grey and brown outlines of people’s faces. They were all around me, breathing on me, looking at me, pondering why I should die. I wanted to move, to tear from the room, to go find my parents, but I couldn’t. I was paralyzed. It was like all my nightmares. I couldn’t do anything at all.

That night, I knew I was going to die.

To me, all those murderers are real. Every Goddamn one of them is real. They’re all in my head, but somehow, I think they’re real. I can think it’s all real, even if I know it isn’t. And yet I’m scared.

The only reason I am sane is because of you. I have tears in my eyes right now. Without you guys I’d be broken. There is no way at all that if you didn’t let me sleep with you, if you didn’t calm me down, I would be sane. I revolve around you. I need you, and you need me. But right now, I don’t think I can repay you. Ever.

Thank you.

Clara <3