People are expected to grow out of their childhood fears without too much trouble. Mentally, teenagers are supposed to get over the imaginary torture that they had as a child and be young adults without their fears. Unlike most, I still grapple with my biggest phobia.

Going back to a previous article that I wrote on the stereotypical idea on emos, people would say that emos adore the dark and have an obsession with gore. As a result, people expect me to fit that idea. In truth, however, I have acluophobia (fear of the dark).

Laugh, if you choose, but it’s actually a common condition. About 8.7% to 18.1% of all Americans suffer from phobias. There are almost 300 million people in the United States, so over 26 million people have phobias, according to my calculations.

By definition, a phobia is a persistent irrational fear of an object or a situation that’s generally harmless. Phobias are interfere with the ability to work, socialize, and go about a daily routine

My point? My experience. I got picked on for being scared of the dark since I was five. To make things more threatening for me, my phobia got worse as the years progressed. I start to panic and can’t actually breathe when I’m walking down a street with no lights on and the moon out. I never grew out of my phobia like all of my friends did when they were around eleven.

My brother and cousins terrorized me by ghost stories and trips through cemeteries, telling me that the bodies would bring me down along with them.

I couldn’t even sleep alone in my grandmother’s house; years went by with my mind telling me there that all of my fears were fear. I always kept my phobia to myself. I couldn’t sleep at friends’ houses because they grew out of their fear of the dark, and slept without some sort of light. I never did. I made up lies to why I didn’t want to go over. Things were getting crazy; I simply couldn’t ever get over the dark.

I got a revelation though. I realized that I can’t be myself on a daily basis without shaking and being frightened by little, innocent things. Overcoming this fear will make me into a better person. I admire my best friend for her courage and faith for the things she has dealt with in the past. She got me to realize that dark and other harmless fears aren’t real. My fear is just fiction.

I’m losing my phobia, little by little, but I can’t completely get rid of it. Attempting not to sound cheesy and pathetic, I know that I’m actually getting braver and stronger from facing my fear every single day.

Overcoming my fears is only one step closer to being the person that I was meant to be.

Kamren Martin is a staff writer for the Cougar Clause. She’s a sophomore and this is her first semester on staff.