This post helped me win first-place in Kelly Balarie’s Fear Fighting Writing Contest in March 2017. I won a meeting with a literary agent. Thank you to the over 350 people who cast votes for me in the contest!
I used to be haunted by a recurring dream. Running and stumbling in a desert valley at dusk, alone and weary. Desperate to find a hiding place before night settled, but not knowing where to turn. Someone or something was hunting me. Something fierce and deadly. I knew it, but I couldn’t see it. My faceless enemy pursued me and I had to keep running as fast as I could, panting and whimpering all the way.
Childhood fears
Fear was my hunter. The fear of abandonment, in particular. Fear gripped me the day my daddy left when I was four, huddled on my bed and crying, laying the first bricks of protection for the walls in my heart. That fear held on tight for thirty-three more Aprils.
