There were one-thousand eyes honed on me, unmoving, pure white in still darkness. I turned off my phone lamp to preserve battery, and to soothe the instincts that pleaded that the sight was unbearable: the thousand unmoving goats that fixated on me, in a sea of nothing. This put me off enough to end my exploration of the farm grounds. I was unaware that doing so would earn me a tangible mark of maturity.

I was disoriented. There was nothing left to sense anymore but the swelling of silence in my eardrums, and they really ached. It was a simple fix, however: keep moving. As my foot made contact with the ground, my ears were greeted with a crackle; as I lifted it, I heard a rustle. I took acute notice that I was walking through a field of dead foliage. Now, I was able to hear my footsteps breaking through dry stalks, a welcomed change from that throbbing nothingness. These crunches grew familiar. Finally, I brought myself comfort.

I continued to follow the sound of my footsteps, completely captured by the rustling of the flora beneath me. Suddenly, my steps were blows to compact sand. I was no longer treading on a cushion of plants. The roaming now brought in muted thuds.

Thuds, that were the pile carpet back at the farmhouse, and roaming, that grew into pacing.

At that moment, I could see it as clear as day: the farmhouse, the warmth, the gentle light. But It wasn’t just the farmhouse, I remembered paralysis, the sensation that came over me when encountering the goats. I recalled every time I flinched as I snapped a twig under my heel, and every time I suppressed a yelp out of fear that something might hurt me. I remembered I needed to go back.

In my dread, everything was vanishing. I couldn't locate the farmhouse anymore. I fumbled for my phone lamp for any kind of direction, but the light dissipated only a few feet before me. Walls of corn took on the silhouette of barbed wire, and the earth hung above me as I trod on the night sky.

I tried to calm myself down the same way, with the sound of my walk. Once again, every sound was amplified in my mind, yet not as kindly; the rustling of the leaves became taunting whispers from the murk; the thuds emitting from my gait were like a drum beat, marking my descent into cowardice. I grew engrossed in the sounds of my own footsteps, and what had once been a comfort, warped into a gripe.

I marched on until I saw it, one-thousand eyes. They glowed with the lamp, and shifted as I lurched, and I wasn’t afraid. Not only were they familiar, but the goats were alive despite the dead air and darkness, and so was I. I grasped at the bars of the goat pen to stabilize; the cool sting of it was enough to shock me out of my daze. What I perceived as dead air melted into my skin as an invigorating breeze. In my moment of reprieve, it all hit me. I finally understood how thoroughly human perception intertwined with emotion. I was experiencing this very phenomenon the entire time. It was all so simple; my bad situations always flipped with a positive mindset.