More Afraid of Being Alone

The walk back to the room

When I was young, my family lived in an old house. At night, using the toilet meant going outside. The darkness frightened me, and when a dog barked at something I could not see, my imagination made it worse.

I remember hurrying back inside with fear still running through me. Then I would see my parents and younger brother sleeping in the same room. I did not need to wake anyone. Simply finding them there changed what I felt.

What I understood later

For a long time I thought the fear was about ghosts or the dark. Looking back, the strongest part of the memory is the moment after I returned: the room had not changed, and the night outside was still dark, but I could breathe again.

I do not miss that house itself. What stayed with me is the ordinary safety of knowing that the people I needed were nearby.

Why the lyrics leave room

The song removes many details of the house and the fear that belonged to my childhood. The important movement is from being afraid to realizing that another person is there.

A listener may hear a different kind of darkness, or a different person who made it easier to endure. This is the memory from which the song began, not a rule for how to hear it.

Why this song opens the album

A Place to Be Human returns to the importance of small human gestures. This song begins before those gestures even need words: safety can be nothing more than someone being in the same room.

The night did not become less frightening. I was no longer facing it alone.