The Leap into the Unknown

Every night, without fail, I stood at the edge of the brown shag carpet in my shared room with my mom’s sister and my childhood hero, Aunt L. The room smelled of dust and faintly of old books, and the bed—oh, the bed—stood before me like a fortress. The canopy bed, with its high posts and heavy fabric draped like a royal tent, seemed to loom over the room. It was beautiful, yes, but to a seven-year-old girl, it felt more like a looming threat than a refuge.

The streetlights outside would cast their long, twisting shadows through the window, bending and stretching across the walls like dark fingers reaching out for me. The shapes they formed weren’t just shadows. In my mind, they were alive, creeping, waiting for the perfect moment to strike. I held my breath, fear tightening my chest as I stared at the bed. The monsters that I believed lurked beneath the canopy weren’t the kind you read about in books. They were real to me, as real as the air I breathed, hiding just out of sight beneath the bed, waiting for a moment of vulnerability.

And so, I would take a deep breath, gather every ounce of courage I had, and run. I would sprint to the bed with everything in me, as fast as my legs could carry me. With one final push, I’d leap onto the mattress, landing hard in the middle, where I believed I’d be safe. It was a small victory, but a victory nonetheless. If I didn’t leap fast enough, I was convinced the monsters would reach out from the shadows and pull me into the darkness. I’d lay there, eyes wide open, heart racing, trying to breathe through the fear until sleep finally overtook me.

But it wasn’t just bedtime that felt like a leap into the unknown. Looking back, I realize that my whole life at the time felt like one endless leap. One big jump into the unknown, never knowing where I might land. After the move to Amarillo, nothing was familiar. I was leaving behind the only home I had known, a place filled with people and memories, and heading to a town that felt as strange and distant as another planet. The small town of Starr, South Carolina, was now a memory, replaced by the sprawling streets of Amarillo.

Starting a new school was its own kind of monster. I didn’t know anyone there, and I wasn’t sure I could ever belong. The walls of the school seemed too high, the faces of my classmates too unfamiliar, their voices too loud and foreign. Every interaction felt like a risk, a leap of faith into something I couldn’t predict. And with each new challenge, I was forced to make another leap, another attempt at finding my place in a world that felt alien to me.

Living with Mama J and Daddy B was another shift, another unknown. Their home was a new world in itself, different from the one I had known in South Carolina. But they were kind, and their house felt safe, even if everything else was still spinning. Mama J, with her gentle manner and calming presence, was a steady anchor in this storm of change, but still, there was this sense of being a stranger in a new world. I longed for stability, but every day felt like another leap into uncertainty.

Through all of this, though, one constant remained: the typewriter. It stood in the corner of Mama J’s room, a steady presence amidst the turmoil. Its rhythmic clack, the sound of the keys striking the paper, became my anchor. It was the one thing that I could count on, the one thing that didn’t change no matter where I was, no matter how much my world shifted. When everything else felt unsteady, when the weight of the unknown threatened to crush me, I could sit down at that typewriter and feel grounded.

The sound of those keys, tapping away in the quiet of the room, became the only rhythm I could trust. It was the one thing that didn’t ask me to leap, didn’t ask me to be anything other than who I was. It didn’t judge or change. It simply was. The typewriter became my safe space—a place where I could collect my thoughts, organize the chaos in my mind, and make sense of the world that seemed to be constantly shifting around me.

And, just like those leaps I took at bedtime, typing became a way of asserting control over my world. When I was terrified of what I couldn’t see, I could find solace in the words that came to life under my fingers. It wasn’t a permanent solution, but for a child who had experienced so much upheaval, it was enough to provide a small sense of peace, a small victory in the battle against the unknown.