Last night I awoke from a deep sleep to what sounded like stealthy footsteps on my carpet. I rolled over and flicked the light on and...just another figment of my imagination. My ceiling fan was rustling a plastic bag. I went back to sleep.

This happens to me all the time. In the middle of the night, I'll think I hear something (sometimes the doorknob turning, sometimes breathing, sometimes footsteps), panic, and realize I'm an utter moron. In short, I'm paranoid. And I have no idea why. Nothing's ever happened to anyone in my family that would cause me to be wary. We have two ferocious dogs that sleep inside. My six-foot-tall, 180-pound brother sleeps in the next room. My dad keeps a loaded .357. And we live in the middle of ABSOLUTELY NOWHERE. I can't figure it out.

What really scares me, though, is what it's going to be like when I move out in a couple of years and am living by myself without dogs, in the city, without guys. (I *am* going out and getting myself a gun and a membership to a gun club. :-p) It's not so much the possibility of something happening that frightens me as it is how much my fright scares me. (That's a horribly constructed sentence, I know, but I can't figure out how to make it clearer. Deal.) Caution is one thing, like getting an escort to my car in a dark parking lot, but I don't want to live in fear. It's not healthy, and it goes against everything I believe in. I don't know how to stop it. That's what's scary.

I've never told anyone all of this before. I'm hoping that maybe writing about it will help, because they say a secret only has power over one until one tells the world about it.

La"Ironic username for this post, eh?"Zorra