Malefactor
This happened when I was eight years old, in one of the last days of spring. I don't remember where, how, or from whom I learned about it. And I don't remember how I reacted to it or what I felt. I only remember approximately how old I was then and what it was. The mere fact that it happened. And I only started noticing it now, when I began thinking about the roots of my strange phobia.
A mass killing in which five people died and two more were injured. And it happened very close to my home at the time, at an intersection.
At approximately the same age, another event happened that I remember much better. My uncle threatened my parents, saying that he would kill all of us, our entire family. That evening, when my parents found out about it, they simply laughed at the threats, sarcastically rolling their eyes and criticizing his speech. Hearing this, I got scared, thinking that they didn't fully understand how frightening and dangerous it was.
Later, my relatives often compared me to my uncle, saying that I would become just like him. Now I understand that they were simply afraid for my future, but back then I felt as if I were chained inside a cage of a repeating generational pattern. I was always afraid of ending up on the side of the road, without a home, without money, without family and without friends. Like him.
I was remembering all this, hoping to find the source of one of my obsessive phobias. A malefactor. I have always been afraid that someone would come into the house with bad intentions: rob, kill, rape, kidnap. I often imagined sounds like footsteps in the hallway, knocking on the door or windows, and screams outside. Especially in the evening, in the dark and silence.
It's funny how, apparently, my memory erased almost everything connected to the first memory I described, except for the mere fact that it happened.
But for the fear to continue living with me, I need a place on which both it and my well-being depend. A home. A place that can be called my own. And a place that can tear apart my associations between myself and my uncle.