Midnight wanderings of the mind

As someone studying Creative Writing, you would think that Imagination would be one of your most valued tools.

So what do you do if you are actually somewhat scared of Imagination? It almost seems a silly thing to say; how can someone be scared of something that they themselves control? But just how much control do we have over Imagination, really? As children we can be told that we are safe tucked up in bed, but that doesn't stop the shadows coming to life. "There's nothing there," we tell ourselves, repeating the mantra, "it's all in my head, it's all in my head." But to be honest, that's worse than if the Big Bad, whatever it is waiting in the dark that we fear, was real. A physical entity can be hidden from - a burglar about to kill you, for example, might not find you if you hide under the bed or in the wardrobe. A giant waiting to crunch you up as a midnight snack will find you wherever you try and hide. Why? Because it only exists in your mind, and therefore everything you know, it knows. You can tell youself it's not real, but Imagination has an annoying habit of whispering "but what if...?" and thus the niggling doubt refuses to listen to Sense and Rationality.

I used the examples of a burglar and giant because these are two fears that plagued me as a child and caused many a sleepless night. Imagine, if you can, a child's bedroom, rectangular in shape: it is quite dark - the carpet is dark brown with flowery shapes in a lighter shade; the wallpaper, though a white background, is covered with pictures of various breeds of dinosaur repeated over and over, dull greens, purples, greys; the curtains are a heavy, black-out type, brown to match the carpet. The bedroom door is always open - not the child's choice - and yellow light floods in from the landing. Along the far wall is a clothes airer, kept in this bedroom because it is the most spacious. Of course, the combination of the landing light and drying clothes means shadows appear with ease - baggy jumpers and trousers morph into a stranger who has broken into the house and is waiting for the child to close her eyes before leaping from his hiding place and killing her before ransacking the house. The child becomes too scared to turn her back on the room, should this scene take place. She convinces herself that if she sleeps with her back to the wall so that she is facing the rest of the room, she will be safe.

Unfortunately it is not that simple, for the child is a fan of the film The BFG, based on the book by Roald Dahl. It's a vicious circle; she loves the movie and enjoys watching it, but the bad giants, in particular The Blood Bottler, terrify her. She is convinced that they are coming for her, and the fact that her bed is against the wall directly beneath the long window only makes it easier for them to reach in and snatch her from her bed.

Again, she tells herself that if she sleeps facin the window, then they will not get her (I'm not entirely sure I follow her logic. Perhaps, even at that young age, she was trying to literally face her fears? Or maybe that's just hindsight and logic speaking, as is often the case with anecdotes from the past). But then what of the burglar so cleverly camouflaged in the family's washing? Facing the window would ensure safety from being eaten but result in being stabbed or strangled, and vice versa if she faces the room.

Obviously such thinking is illogical and simply the result of an overactive imagination. It is cruelly ironic that what allows such pleasure from creating games to play in daylight can be the same thing that keeps you in Fear's icy grip, unable to sleep at night. Even now, while my dreams generally take a different path (ignoring the fact that yes, I did have a nightmare where the Blood Bottler was after me only earlier this year...), I still sometimes find myself uneasy when it comes to bedtime simply because I don't want to dream.

Perhaps it is natural to fear Imagination, to some extent. After all, it is one of the few things in the world that can go anywhere, good or bad. It was thanks to someone's imagination that the atomic bomb was created.

All I want to know is, how do you turn off your imagination?