When I was a child, I would place my head onto my flat, cold pillow before going to sleep. From here I would listen not to anything out of my room or the pillow, no nothing like that. I would listen to footsteps,thump, thump, thump, and as I would listen they would go faster and faster and faster, until I would panic and jolt up and make sure I was once again...alone. It took me a few years of this happening every once in a while before I realized that those footsteps I heard were not some nameless, shapeless figure chasing me but in fact were my own heartbeats. As I would grow increasingly anxious my heart would beat faster, as they do, which would serve only to further provoke anxiety and so on...But even after this realization I was still scared. It took me even more years after then for me to realize why I was still scared of the footsteps. Now I know that reason, it is because I am not scared of the footsteps or the panicking and definitely not the jolting up in the middle of the night. No, I am afraid of when the footsteps will stop, but I do not take my head of the pillow, I do not panic, and I cease to exist.