What fears do you have? I don’t mean your average, run of the mill fears like death or the boogeyman. I mean really outlandish stuff. For instance, I cannot stand scorpions or snakes. But it doesn’t stop there for me. I can’t even look at or TOUCH them in a magazine or picture. It creeps me the hell out. I know it’s dumb. They aren’t going to jump off the page or screen and get me but I still can’t touch them! Another thing, if I am camping I hate standing right next to a tall, steep mountain. I just know it is going to fall over on me. Or, if we are driving and there is absolutely nothing around me but empty space… I freak out. The emptiness makes me feel so small. My next one is probably the most ridiculous of all. Have you ever mapped something on googlemaps.com? I have done that to see my old houses or neighborhod or to find a house that I am looking to purchase. I was doing it today, in fact. Then I found Lake Pleasant Parkway on googlemaps. I followed the road up until – Holy Shit! I was at the lake. It was huge and dark and I felt as though I was going to throw up. I had to close my internet browser down immediately. How irrational is that?! How is it going to hurt me to look at a satellite image of a small lake? That’s just it. It won’t hurt me. Yet it felt as though I was going to fall right into the lake. Why do I have these fears or phobias? Is it even that? Or am I just really messed up in the head?
The other day (the weekend before Halloween) my husband went to a party at his friend’s house. He said he was going to spend the night there which was fine by me because I didn’t want him or his friends driving drunk to get him home. Well, sure enough he called me close to midnight and asked me to pick him up because he didn’t want to spend the night after all. I took off and tried to take a short cut to get there. Little did I know that the road I was taking would go right through the middle of some hills around my house. There was construction on the road. It was pitch black because there were no lights anywhere. There was the bright moon though, and it gave off just enough light to make things scary for me. I was driving through this twisty road seeing nothing but two mountains on either side of me. I couldn’t see the edges of the road too well. Because of the construction the shoulders of the road were chopped off. I literally felt like I was going to fall into a deep abyss if I veered to far one way or the other. I had to put my hand up on the right side of my head just so I didn’t have to see the mountain and I had to try to ignore the mountain on the left side of me. I started having a panic attack. Not a good thing to do when I am in the middle of nowhere in complete darkness. I haven’t felt fear like that in a long time. After what seemed to be an hour (but just lasted about 10 minutes) I passed the mountains and construction and pulled into a church parking lot. It was still pitch black out but I felt a little better in that parking lot. I turned off the car and sat there and shook. I had to force myself to breathe slowly. I got really turned around because of the twists in the road. It took awhile for me to get myself together and I was able to continue my way to pick up the man.
Why do I have these stupid fears? What was going to happen to me on that road? Nothing. The mountains really weren’t going to close in on me and squish me. The road wasn’t going to open up and swallow me. I was not going to fall deep, deep into the underworld. But I tell you what, at that moment it sure felt as though that was exactly what was going to happen.
