Fear of the Voices

Depression, anxiety, insecurity and nightmares. What can I even say about these things? These are so common nowadays, everyone knows them! So many people have, or should I say… TOO many people have at least one of these. It’s not their fault. They have been pushed to the limit. Trauma, mental load, bullying, unsafe people around them, horrible living conditions, you name it.

I remember one of the first nightmares I had. I was around 4-6 years old when I saw it. There was a giant floating head with floating, big, long hands and horrifying eyes and smile on our backyard. Every hair in its head was long and standing up to the sky. I remember it saying something like: “Something is going to happen…” and it started to rain fiery knives from the sky (If I remember the rain right).

The head was right. Some years later, bad things started to happen. As a child, I named the head “Tuulispää” (Windhead in english). I don’t know, if I ever said about it to my parents. I can’t even remember why I named it like that. Nightmares weren’t common until my teen years, when depression really started to kick in. I started to see more different kinds of demons/monsters in my dreams. One more scarier than the other. Twice I have woken up to my own screaming. Three times I have had a sleep paralysis and couple of times smaller ones. 

When I moved from my childhood home to a new place, I was relieved. So relieved, I slept 14 hours almost every night, which lasted pretty long too. I was living in full on tension in my childhood home and now that it was over, I just drained. Almost like all of my plugs were removed that had me in tense and defensive mode. Now that I lived alone in my own home, I was getting more and more anxious. I didn’t want to meet people. I didn’t want to see people. I just wanted to be alone. Even all of the noises coming outside from my window made me more anxious. Day after day I felt more like nothing matters at all. I just wanted to be alone inside my house and play videogames, eat fast food and candy, watch videos and porn. I didn’t care about anything. I didn’t feel anything, only emptiness.

Was this peace? No, no it wasn’t. I may have lived in peace, but something just didn’t feel right. Something was lurking in my house. Laughing at me, making fun of me, slapping me on my cheek, so I could feel even more useless and weaker than before. It was strange, how sometimes, I didn’t feel alone in my home. Now, as a christian myself, I understand why. I’ve always loved peace and quiet (my childhood home was in countryside), but this clearly wasn’t peace. I had fear of the voices. I felt forgotten in my flat. Forgotten by everyone except psychiatrists and youth workers. Sometimes it felt, like I was forbidden to go outside and meet people. I wanted to be safe and get hurt by people no more. Man, little I knew about anything at that time.

I couldn’t shout in my childhood home, but now I can shout as much as I want. Demons can still find their way into my dreams, but I think that’s because God lets them in for purpose. Not to bully me, but to strengthen me and give some important information for future. It’s like their plans are getting rubbed against my face, so their attempts collapse, before they can even do anything. They aren’t scary anymore and God wisely turned their wickedness into something good. It’s time to make voices fear me.