In Class Assignment, I Was Scared To Fall Asleep, Kathleen Paxtor

When I was younger I never really was scared of much, but the one thing that scared me the most was going to bed. I absolutely hated going to bed or the idea of sleeping. At a young age I would stay up until one or two in the morning. On a daily basis I was getting 4-5 hours of sleep. As a 5 year old that should not be normal, but for me it was. If I could find any excuse to stop going to bed I would use it. After putting up a fight and it was time for me to go to bed I would always make my mom stay with me. I could not go to bed without my mom in the room or a light on. As embarrassing as it sound I slept with my parents until the age of 14. At the age of 15 I could go to sleep alone but I needed to have a light on at all times.

As I’ve gotten older I am no longer afraid of sleep or have to sleep with a light on. Looking back, I think that the area I grew up in caused one of the big reasons of why I hated sleep. I am from South Central Los Angeles (Compton, Inglewood, etc), which was not and is still not, the best part of the city or the safest. You would hear police, gunshots, and people yelling at all hours. I think that I was not afraid of sleep itself but what could happen in the middle of the night when I was sleeping. We lived in a small garage behind my grandparent’s house with a fence around our house and bars on our windows. I grew up knowing what murder, rape, gang violence, drive-byes, shoot-outs, and theft was. At the age of 6 I had my first lockdown because of a shooting in front of the school. The idea of not knowing what could happen terrified me; the idea of being unalert when we were sleeping made me feel like I had no power to what could have happened to us. I would see my family go to bed like nothing happened in our area and I felt like I needed to protect us. I knew we lived in an unsafe place with drivebyes and gangs right down the street. I never thought about how growing up in such a dangerous neighborhood really affected me. As I've gotten older I have learned how to appreciate where I came from and what I have learned.  A couple of years later, my parents decided we needed to move out of Cali to keep ourselves safe. We moved to a small, small town in the Midwest called Carthage, MO (right by Joplin, MO) and it was a huge culture shock but it was one for the better. I started to gain experience on how to interact with others and how it felt to for once feel safe. I could go to bed and close my eyes because instead of hearing gunshots I would just hear the crickets chirp in peace. Slowly, I was able to regain sleep with peace in mind.

(This was my actual house)