My Fear Of Change

MY FEAR OF CHANGE
















Steven j. Lloyd
Concord N.H. State Prison
281 N State St, Concord, NH
Phone [phone]
[e-mail]


February 23, 2006




To whom it may concern,


I want to take this opportunity to tell you why I think you should give me a chance for parole at my next hearing. Everyday I hear about people’s fears and phobias. Sometimes it is heights, sometimes it’s driving over bridges, and sometimes its spiders. There are more of them out there but it would take way to much time to list them all. Well anyway, the one that I never hear anyone talk about is the fear of change. The word alone puts butterflies in my stomach. I believe that everyone is afraid of change. Dying is a change, I’ve never met any person who isn’t afraid of dying. This makes me feel a little better because I fear change also. The trick that I have learned with age is, you shouldn’t let a fear become a phobia. What’s the difference? A fear is something that you are afraid of. A phobia is a fear that gets so strong it keeps you from living a normal life. That’s why I have turned everything I do into a pattern. I don’t have to be a victim of my fear of change because I will not allow any changes to happen in my life. If everybody did this, they would rarely run into any problems that could hurt them. I mean think about it, when do people usually get into car accidents? They get into car accidents when they are exploring new places. They end up hurting themselves when they’re naïve to the roads that lay ahead of them. I applied this concept to my life. I never try anything new because these are where the risks are at. These are the places that people end up getting hurt and I don’t want to get hurt again. I will never make the mistake of change again, not like I did a year ago. I want to tell you what happened but it’s hard. I’ve kept my past a secret for a long time now and if I tell you about it, then I’d be making a change. I guess I really don’t have a choice though. I can’t stay in jail any longer. I’m going make an exception this one time. Only because I want you to understand me. I want you to understand why I made the choices that I did.
In the past, I was afraid of everything. I used patterns everyday to make life easier and I usually never broke them. For example, every day I woke up at the precise time of 5:57 A.M. Everyday, I’d walk into the bathroom at the exact moment the clock on my living room wall hit 6:00 A.M. I would only change a pattern if it didn’t work for me, or if altering that pattern made my life better in some way. When I’d take a shower, I would walk into the bathroom, I would turn the sink on, then I’d walk over to the shower and turn the shower on. After that, I’d walk back to the sink to brush my teeth for exactly one minute and then I would take my first shower of the day. My first shower couldn’t be any less than one hour long. My second and third showers couldn’t be any less then two hours long. I never stood up in the shower, I didn’t want to slip, fall, and hurt myself again. The trick is you can’t let a fear become a phobia. That’s why I turned every minute of my life into a pattern that had worked for me, a pattern that had prevented anything bad from ever happening to me. I didn’t have to be afraid of change because I didn’t let any changes happen. Everything always went according to plan. Then one day on December, 5th, 1989, a change did happen. One I couldn’t prevent. New neighbors moved into the house that was right next to mine. That house had been empty for years before that point. I didn’t like the fact that there was a new family living in it. I remember hoping that they would never talk to me, which was the case with most Londonderry families. Families around there never wanted to have anything to do with anyone else. Their personalities were usually cold and unfriendly, which I liked. I remember about a week after the new family moved in. I was in my bedroom and I randomly got an urge to look out my window. I saw a beautiful girl with a red scarf wrapped around her neck making a snow man in front of her new house. She must have been around 12 years old at the time. The snowman had a carrot for a nose and had three rocks for buttons placed on its stomach. The snowman itself was much larger then the girl. I remember the eyes of the snowman caught my eyes and I saw something that really bothered me. The eyes of the snowman were not evenly placed. The left eye was in the correct spot but the right eye was where the snowman’s right ear should have been, if snowmen had ears that is. How could that little girl be so dumb? I stood at that bedroom window waiting for her to fix it but instead she decided to make snow angels. She was naive to the snowman’s right eye but I wasn’t. About a half an hour later the girl went inside. I bet the cold had gotten to her I remember thinking to my self. For hours I stood there at that window staring at that snowman’s eyes. I still don’t know why that right eye bothered me so much but I couldn’t stand the fact that its placement was incorrect. After a few more hours of standing, the darkness of the night snuck up on me and I could no longer see that snowman’s ever lasting stare. So I decided to go visit the snowman myself and fix his right eye. I hate making changes but this was a change that had to be made. I wouldn’t have been able to sleep at all that night if I didn’t at least try to fix the snowman’s eye. I went into my closet and pulled out my blue jacket, which was a little hard to get on because after all those years I had grown but my jacket had stayed the same size. Why would I get a new jacket, if I could still wear this one? I went down my stairs, stepping on every other step on the way down. Then I went into my kitchen, where I saw my boots. They were exactly where they were supposed to be, just as I had planned. With a struggle, I put my left boot on my left foot and then I put the right boot on my right foot. Everyday that that I put those boots on, they would feel a little tighter then the day before. This couldn’t have been though, I was a 45 year old man. I already did all my growing for this life time by that point. I wasn’t growing, it was all in my head. After I got my boots on, I walked around the interior of my house. I needed to make sure that it was free of any fire hazards. If my place burnt down while I was gone, then where would I have lived? After making sure everything was safe, I went down my basement stairs only stepping on every other step on the way down. I went to my electrical box and I flicked all the switches to off. This left my house completely powerless and me standing alone in the dark. Now I was ready to go outside. I walked up my basement stairs, walked through my kitchen to the back door. I unlocked that door with the only key to my house. This was the key that dangled from the chain that was around my neck. I would always wear it there because that was the only place that it couldn’t be stolen from me. I then stepped outside and I felt cold winter air hit my face. I shut my back door and then I locked it. I didn’t even check to see if my other doors were locked. This was the only door that I ever used, why would my others doors be unlocked? I walked quietly towards my neighbor’s yard with my head down traveling through untouched, white snow. Finally, I reached snow that was touched, snow that had the foot steps of that little girl, the girl with the red scarf that I had been spying on through my bedroom window. I peered into the windows of my neighbor’s large, blue, house. I could see only black. No sound could be heard from where I stood. I needed to make sure no-one was watching me. I looked at the watch that was on my right wrist. It was not accurate. My wrist watch had stopped working eight years before that night, what was I thinking? So then I pulled my pocket watch from my front right, jacket pocket. It was one o’clock in the morning, exactly. After making sure I was safe, I walked over to the snowman. I was surprised by his actual size. He seemed much smaller then when I was looking at him from my bedroom window. I stood about two feet over the snowman’s head. I carefully reached down and grabbed that snowman’s right eye, then put it in the correct spot. I thought it was finally over. When I was about to walk away a light suddenly turned on in my neighbor’s house. I heard the sound of the front door creaking open. I remember feeling naked and exposed. Not knowing what to do I just stood there, just as stiff as the snowman him self. I watched that front door slowly open and I saw a beautiful young girl. She just stood there with her blanket draped around her. She looked at me and tore me apart with her blue eyes. This was the girl who made me to go out there in the first place! This was the girl who didn’t put the right eye in the correct spot on the snowman‘s face. I had a deep feeling of hate that burned inside of me, growing every second that I stood there staring at that girl. I hated her for making me feel that way. I couldn’t bear her looking at me any longer, so I decided to run away. I ran back to the only place that I felt safe in my life, I ran back to my house. When I got to my back door, I unlocked it as quickly as I could. I then went inside and I locked the door. I took my boots off. Right boot first, then left boot. I walked into my kitchen. I just stood there, rewinding what had just happened in my head, over and over again. Sadness filled my eyes and I fell to the floor crying. I scolded myself for letting that girl see me. They were going to think I was different from them! They were going to mock me, just like the kids in school used to do. I Couldn’t let that happen to me again. So I got off the kitchen floor, wiped the tears from my face and walked over to my boots that were right where they were supposed to be. I put the left boot on first, then the right. I unlocked my back door. I stepped outside. I shut the door and then I locked it. I walked behind my house and over to my shed. I opened the shed door and I saw my ax sitting in the corner. It was right where it was supposed to be, right where I had left it the last time that I had used it. This time I needed it for a different reason. This time I needed it to fix a big problem. I went over to that large blue house, wearing my blue jacket, my boots, and with my heavy ax in my left hand and I killed that entire family. I left that little girl for last though. I could tell she was afraid of change too, she was afraid of dying. After I ended her life, I felt a little better knowing that I was not the only person in this world who feared change.
If released on parole, I promise to return to my routine and never deviate from it again, so that this will never happen again. I’ve learned my lesson about change. Thank you for your time.


Sincerely,

Steven J. Lloyd