David - Writing about fear - from my book The Way of the Sailor

This is from my latest memoir/adventure non-fiction book, The Way of the Sailor. This is a true experience that had a profound effect on me, and I include it near the end of the book. It was quite a revelation to experience this, and powerful to relive it, too:

That night, back on your boat once again, you dream that you are running through a maze. You run in cold terrible fear away from something you haven’t yet seen, but that you know for certain is a ruthless tiger, its sharp and hideous fangs dripping with blood. There are people screaming and running and blood spattered on the walls. You wake in the night with your heart pounding. It seems so real. It’s a dream you’ve had before, many times in many ways. But always with abject fear, always with a futile attempt to escape and always with utter helplessness.

You remember what the woman said. You take a few deep breaths. Then you listen. You hear a very gentle creaking from the ship, almost as if it is breathing too. You hear the crackling under the hull, like radio static, tiny creatures performing their underwater errands. You hear the night heron, far off down the way.

You hear your heart.

And there in the darkness of the ship, in your bunk far from home but also more at home than you have ever been in your life, you have an idea. Something that’s never occurred to you before. You are going to go back to that dream. Back into that maze, past the people running and screaming, past the blood on the walls, past all the warning signs. You are going to find that tiger and look it in the eyes.

And so you do.

You let the very slight rocking of the ship take you back down into the depths of sleep again, and all the way you resolve to find the tiger. You sleep. You enter the dream again. There is the maze, the people running, the screaming and blood. But this time, one detail is different. This time you force yourself by sheer will to stop running away. You turn and go the other direction instead. Deeper and deeper into the maze.

You come into a clearing and there it is. That awful tiger. But it’s only a tiny kitten mewling for milk. It needs your help. You hold it in your hands. It begins to purr against your chest.

And then you sleep; deeply, profoundly, as the moon falls, and the tide rises, and the vast, astonishing mechanism around you continues to turn, and burn and sing.