By Cheryl Jeanne Saputra, Junior College 1<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Scopophobia is the fear of being watched, whether in public or when you\u2019re alone.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cWho thought this could happen to her?\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n A mother\u2019s voice trembled as she asked the therapist, her words heavy with disbelief. Molly sat next to her, rigid, sweat pooling on her skin. Her foot tapped frantically on the floor, each tap measured, almost like she was keeping time with an invisible clock. But it wasn\u2019t just a nervous habit. Each beat seemed to prompt her eyes to dart, scanning the room for something. Or someone. Something no one else could see.<\/p>\n\n\n\n But if she told anyone, who would believe her? A child\u2019s imagination<\/em>, they\u2019d say. The product of an overactive mind, an innocent mind<\/em>. No one would believe that a nine-year-old girl could be haunted by the feeling of eyes on her, all the time, every minute of every day. Even her friends had started to drift away, growing uncomfortable with the strange stories she told about the presence that hovered just beyond their sight. <\/p>\n\n\n\n The disbelief was suffocating, the isolation even worse. So Molly sat there, tapping, looking, searching. Her lips barely moved as she whispered, \u201cThey\u2019re watching.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cThey\u2019re always watching.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n At first, it had been something she could almost ignore\u2014just the creeping sensation of being observed. It happened at school, at home, even when she was alone in her room with the door locked. But soon, it became impossible to escape. She couldn\u2019t focus in class, couldn\u2019t play outside without constantly checking over her shoulder. Homework piled up untouched, and games no longer felt fun. Every moment was consumed by that tightening coil of dread in her stomach. She was a child, a book with pages still unturned, filled with the promise of stories yet to be written. But now, she felt as if her pages had been stolen, overwritten with a story she couldn\u2019t comprehend, as if an invisible hand had gripped the pen, crafting her fate.<\/p>\n\n\n\n And that was the worst part\u2014knowing she didn\u2019t write it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n But one day, something strange happened. As Molly sat in the back of the classroom, her eyes fixated on the chalkboard, she heard a voice. It was faint at first, barely audible, like a whisper carried in the wind. But then it grew louder, clearer, unmistakable. It wasn\u2019t one of her classmates. It wasn\u2019t her teacher. It was a voice she had never heard before.<\/p>\n\n\n\n She froze, her heart pounding in her chest. She looked around\u2026. It sounded like a hiss.<\/p>\n\n\n\n She froze, her heart pounding in her chest. She looked around the room<\/em>, but no one else seemed to notice. The kids were busy scribbling in their notebooks, the teacher continued to drone on, oblivious. Yet the voice continued.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cIt was coming from the walls\u2026..\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n It was coming from the walls<\/em>. No\u2014from everywhere. From nowhere.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Her breath caught in her throat, her fingers gripping the edge of the desk so hard her knuckles turned white. She stood up abruptly, her chair scraping against the floor. The entire class turned to stare at her, confused, some giggling at the sudden outburst. But Molly couldn\u2019t see them. All she could feel were the eyes\u2014the eyes of something far greater than a classroom full of kids. She bolted for the door. Her teacher\u2019s calls faded into the distance as she ran down the hallway. The voice was still following her, louder and louder, echoing through her mind.<\/p>\n\n\n\n When she finally reached the schoolyard, she stopped, gasping for breath. The world spun around her, a blur of faces and places, but the voice was gone. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Silence. <\/p>\n\n\n\n For a moment, she allowed herself to believe it was over that maybe it had just been a figment of her imagination.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Maybe she\u2019d finally lost it. Maybe this was the beginning of the end, the slow descent into madness she had feared for so long. But even then, standing alone in the yard, she felt their eyes on her.<\/p>\n\n\n\n She told herself it wasn\u2019t real. It couldn\u2019t be real. But deep down, she knew the truth. They were there. They had always been there.<\/p>\n\n\n\n She often wondered, in the quiet hours of the night, if she did know who was watching. She could feel their presence, cold and distant, like a gaze she couldn\u2019t escape. And yet, it was familiar too, as if this invisible watcher had always been there, lurking in the background of her life. Sometimes, she thought she caught glimpses\u2014a fleeting shadow in the corner of her vision, a feeling of breath on her neck when she was alone. But when she turned, there was never anyone there.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cThey won\u2019t believe me,\u201d she whispered into the dark of her room one night, clutching her blanket tightly around her small frame. Because who would? What could she say? How could she explain that the one watching her wasn\u2019t in the same world she was? How could she explain that this person didn\u2019t see her from the outside, but from inside her very story?<\/p>\n\n\n\n She had tried to make sense of it, tried to piece together the fragments of her fractured reality. The presence felt real, tangible, but somehow untouchable, unreachable. Whoever\u2014or whatever\u2014it was, they weren\u2019t here in the same way she was. It was as if she existed under a lens, every thought, every action recorded by someone who didn\u2019t belong in her world. <\/p>\n\n\n\n But, maybe Molly did know who was watching her, but that fact is useless, because all along, she knew that the person who watched her was someone she could not touch. This person is behind a screen, and perhaps someone who didn\u2019t know. <\/p>\n\n\n\n The person who she felt had been watching her, had actually been reading about her from the beginning.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Who’s watching the kids?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1939,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":true,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mi_skip_tracking":false},"categories":[5,18],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quill.binabangsaschool.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1938"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/quill.binabangsaschool.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/quill.binabangsaschool.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quill.binabangsaschool.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quill.binabangsaschool.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1938"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/quill.binabangsaschool.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1938\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1940,"href":"https:\/\/quill.binabangsaschool.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1938\/revisions\/1940"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quill.binabangsaschool.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/1939"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quill.binabangsaschool.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1938"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quill.binabangsaschool.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1938"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quill.binabangsaschool.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1938"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}