Things That I Am Afraid Of

The thing about anxiety is that it's not really defined.  I know that my palms are sweaty, my neck is crimson, and I feel like I'm about to hurl; I have identified these sensations as being related to anxiety.  I know when I feel anxious; I just don't always know exactly what I am anxious about.  Sometimes it is easy to figure out what I am anxious about, like a new job. Other times, I end up more anxious about not being able to figure out what I am anxious about.  It's a vicious cycle, and while my anxiety doesn't completely shut me down, it certainly makes it difficult to function.  Over the years I've acquired a variety of fears, guaranteed to up my anxiety to extreme levels. 

10. Crickets.  Right now you're thinking, crickets?  Those cute little bugs that play lovely music?  Why on earth would anybody be scared of those?  And I wasn't ever scared of them, either, until I went to college.  It was there that I found out that crickets like to hold what can only be called cricket conventions.  They will congregate by the thousands, all over the walls and the ground.  These congregating crickets will crunch underneath your feet as you walk, no matter how hard a person might try to avoid them.  They will fly off of the wall without any warning, ending up in book bags, purses, and hair.  These crickets also seem to enjoy flying into the ventilation, just to wake unsuspecting college students up by landing on them in the middle of the night.  Ick.

9/8. People/Speaking in front of People.  I am an introvert, as I've said before.  Large crowds drain my batteries.  It's not that I'm afraid of people as a general rule.  I just feel awkward and completely ridiculous around them.  If I am walking, I think that I am going to fall down in the most spectacular way possible.  If I am trying to talk to people, I almost always feel as though I am speaking in complete gibberish.  Part of me knows that I am speaking English, and it registers that the person I am speaking to is nodding and responding.  I am still afraid I'll say the wrong thing, even if I have no idea what that might be.

7. Forgetting Everything.  My grandmother had dementia caused by mini-strokes.  Every little glitch erased a piece of her memory, until there was nothing left.  While there are a few memories I wouldn't miss, I do not want to forget all the good memories I've collected, or the names of my friends, or the names of my family.  I am paranoid about this.  Every time I forget a date or name, a little part of me panics, even if there is a perfectly logical reason.  I used to have a great memory, but just like every parent has to give half of their IQ to their children, I think I gave half of my memory to my son.

6. Something happening to my child.  This is part and parcel with being a mother, but they don't really talk about it in the brochures.  Nobody talks about how, in the dead of night, you'll wake up and have to lean over the crib because you can't hear them breathing on the monitor.  They never discuss the fact that a parent never stops worrying about their children.  Ever.  If my child coughs, a part of me wants to wrap him up in a blanket and take his temperature, even though I know perfectly well that he has allergies.  It is all I can do to drop Zane off at school; my brain is always waiting for a phone call, even though I know that he is perfectly safe.  That's the thing about anxiety--it is not a reasonable emotion. 

5. Precarious heights.  If I am in a building with multiple floors, I am generally okay.  But if I am on a ladder, I feel less than steady.  I feel downright disoriented.  Even standing on a chair, changing a light bulb, I'm concerned that the chair will wobble and I'll fall.  I am not afraid of the plane crashing--I am afraid of how far the plane will fall with me in it.  When we visited New York City, I refused to go to the top of the Empire State Building, because I was afraid that I would fall, or the elevator would fall with me in it.  Logic has nothing to do with fear; even telling myself that there was no reason for me to be concerned, I was still freaking out.

4. Small Spaces.  I had no idea that I was claustrophobic until I had to have an MRI in my 30s to rule out MS.  They put me into that tube, I looked up, and my first thought was, "Coffin."  I hyperventilated until they got me out.  Then they gave me two Xanax; obviously I wasn't the only person to lose it in the MRI.  They put me back into that tube, and I still wasn't going to be able to do it, until Larry, my future husband, came into the room and held onto my foot.  That's how freaked out I was--I didn't even care that poor Larry would not have any hearing after hanging out with me.  All I cared about was the idea that if he was holding onto my foot, I could not possibly be in a coffin.  Poor man!  Soon after that, my claustrophobia began to rear its ugly head in other areas, like elevators.  I can handle small elevators as long as I am the only person on it. If anyone else gets on, I have to get out and walk. 

3. Pain.  I can deal with a lot of things.  I can tolerate migraine pain and fibromyalgia pain, but only because I've had years of experience.  I can handle the dull pains I get from walking, lifting, exercising.  Getting out of bed after my first C-section, however, nearly killed me.  That sharp pulling pain in the gut, the feeling as though your insides were about to be your outsides!  I fractured my arm when a galloping horse tossed me out of a saddle not because I landed on it, but because I was holding so tight to the horn. I didn't want to let go, because I knew how much the landing was going to hurt.  Yes, that was really stupid. 

2. Extremists.  Think the Taliban is bad, with their horrible treatment of women, the 'honor' killings, the acid in the faces of people who disagree with them?   There are people like that living here.  Those individuals who think that it's their right to own 4700 semi-automatic assault rifles and to heck with reasonable gun control?  Extremists.  Those people who want every single immigrant in this country deported, no matter what?  Extremists.  That evil church in Kansas?  Extremists.  Those people make me nervous, because it would be sooooo easy to just let all that hate take over and react to that extremism in kind.  I guess that I'm afraid of them because they make me doubt my ability to resist them. Well, that and I really don't know what I would look like in a burka.

1. Cockroaches.  My parents used to let us go to the movies by ourselves, and they didn't always make sure that the movies we went to were G rated.  Somehow, I ended up seeing the movie Bug.  The poster had a specific warning that this particular movie was not a good idea for people with insect phobias, but since I was 10 years old, what did I know?   I've been scared of them ever since.  In Texas we have HUGE cockroaches, which sometimes fly.   The last time I ran across one of those, it fell on me.  In the shower.  I pulled the shower curtain down and the towel rack out of the wall in my haste to escape, and I'm sure that my scream registered seismically.  Now I gladly pay a pest control company to show up here once a month to make sure that there are no cockroaches in this house, among other critters.


What are YOU afraid of?



 List 10 things you are afraid of.
 

The A-List: Fear Itself

Everyone has something that they are scared of.  If someone tells you that they aren't afraid of anything, or at least nervous, then they are either lying or a psychopath, and you should stay away from them.  At the very least, there's bound to be at least one thing that has us quaking in our boots, or fainting dead away, or some other extreme response.  It's normal, to be scared.  This is your brain's way of protecting you, and it's why humans have survived.  When you're scared, you tend to move away from what scares you.   This is a perfectly logical decision that is not based in any way on anything silly.  Unless it is. The brain is sometimes funny about fear responses.  I have yet to come up with a logical reason for someone to be afraid of the number 13, for instance.  That I am willing to consider that there might even BE a logical reason to be afraid of the number 13 tells you that I have become quite a bit more reasonable in my 'over the hill' years. 

When I was a kid, I had the standard kid fears about the monster under the bed, the dark, etc. As I grew, I realized that it was silly to be afraid of monsters under the bed, since everyone knows that they are in the closet.  In my twenties, I tried to focus on more realistic things to be afraid of, such as serial killers or bad hair.  Then my thirties showed up, and suddenly things that I'd never dreamed of being afraid of were popping up on the radar.  Here are some of the things that I am scared of, or at least extremely and unreasonably nervous about.  

1. Enclosed spaces  I was never claustrophobic until I had an MRI, and now even taking the elevator is a challenge.  All I thought about when they put me in that tube was "Wow, this is what being in a coffin would be like..." and it was downhill from there.  Since I am not one to give in to my fears, I did have the MRI, but it took TWO Xanax, and my husband had to sit in the room and keep his hand on my ankle.  People at work think that I am odd because I won't stay on the elevator if there's too many people on it, but in my brain more people=less oxygen.  I'd rather walk down the stairs, even if I have to use my inhaler.

2. Heights   Let me clarify: I'm not really afraid of heights.  I'm actually afraid of falling from heights.  And it's not just any sort of heights that make me concerned about falling.  If I am in a tall building, for example, I am not all that worried about falling.  I wouldn't go up in the Space Needle in Seattle, or the Empire State Building, because of the elevators, but I expect that I would have been fine once I got to the top.  I did fine when I climbed the stairs in the Washington Monument, and that venerable monument has been in the process of falling since it was built.  If I climb a ladder, however, I automatically feel all wonky, and it makes me nervous.  It's probably some sort of vestibular thing.  I'm also tactile defensive, but that hasn't manifested in any unreasonable fears yet. 

3. Cockroaches  I firmly believe that all things serve a purpose.  Even cockroaches.  There has to be a reason that they exist, right?  That said, cockroaches give me the heebie-jeebies.  They make my skin crawl.  Imagine my horror when I found out the hard way that there are some cockroaches that fly!  When I see a cockroach in my house, I must kill it.  I must find a very hard shoe and smash that cockroach into oblivion, because I have learned that sprays don't always work to kill them. In fact, sometimes when you spray them, they will chase you.  When the cockroach is deceased, I have to disinfect the shoe, and the floor, and myself.  Because, ICK!   Of course, now I pay a pest control company to spray around the house.  It's worth every penny.

4. Not being able to breathe  This is a no-brainer; I know exactly where this fear came from.  In 2003, I was on a respirator for a little while.  Ever since then, I've had nightmares where I can't breathe.  I looked it up, and this is a common thing for people who have been on respirators.  It's sort of a post-traumatic stress thing, I guess.  Being on a respirator is traumatic, and not just because of the reason you are put on the respirator.  When you wake up and realize that you are not actually breathing on your own, you freak out.  And then, when they pull that tube out of your lungs, it doesn't hurt, but it is indescribably weird.  It's like your lungs are trying to inhale while the tube is being pulled out

5. Crowds  In my twenties I was always in the mosh pit at concerts; today, I will pay extra to not be anywhere near a crowd.  I am not even sure when I started being nervous about crowds.  It sort of just was there.  I am a short person, and I hate not being able to see what is going on around me when I am surrounded by taller people.  I also don't like that crowds tend to have a mind of their own.  Like a herd of cattle, any crowd could suddenly decide to stampede, and I would be stuck.  This fear has become worse since I had my son, because he likes to run ahead and I'm afraid that I will lose him.  Luckily, I married a tall man, and when we are in crowds, I just stick close to him.  And I make him hold on to Zane.

Those are my top five.  What are YOU afraid of?

RemembeRED: Why It's A Phobia

For this week’s memoir prompt, we’re going to let narrative take a backseat. Choose a moment from your personal history and mine it for sensory detail. Describe it to us in rich, evocative details. Let us breath the air, hear the heartbeat, the songs, feel the fabric and the touch of that moment. I will probably have nightmares about this one!


*scritch*

*scritch*

I open my eyes to darkness, pitch black, heart thudding in my chest.

What?

*scritch-scritch-scritch*

I wake up fully, and the darkness seems more ominous, more threatening.

*scritch-scritch*

It is a stealthy sound, tiptoeing. Furtive.

*scritch*

I am not afraid of the dark, I tell myself.

Is it coming closer? It is impossible to tell over the sound of my heart trying to escape from my chest.

*scritch*

My brain is frantically trying to identify that sound, that whispery scratching sound. If I don't move, maybe whatever is making that sound will go away.

*scritch-scritch-scritch-scritch*

I am not afraid of the dark, I tell myself. What concerned me was what might be IN the dark with me.

*scrit-scritch-scri---*

I have never been the kind of person to wait for approaching peril, and finally I can stand it no longer. I jump up in the darkness to find the light switch. I turn to confront the monster.

And freeze.

There, on the stack of printer paper NEXT to the bed, right NEXT to my pillow, right NEXT to where I had been sleeping...was a cockroach.

An extremely large cockroach.

Fear This

Over the past month, I've become afraid of the elevator in the building where I work. This should not be odd. People acquire anxieties over the years. I've worked in the same building for twenty years, however, and I've ridden that same elevator at least once every day that I've worked there. Ridden that elevator, which only goes up two floors, with no anxiety whatsoever for twenty years. And now all of a sudden I am afraid of the damned thing.

I am afraid that the elevator will break down with me inside it, even though the elevator has only broken down ONCE in the twenty years I've worked there. Once I start thinking that the elevator might break down, that thought is stuck in my head. Like white on rice, the saying goes. This triggers my latent claustrophobia, even when I am not actually IN the elevator. The claustrophobia makes me feel like there is no air in the elevator, even when I am not IN the elevator. That's right--all of my thoughts and fears about getting stuck on the elevator all occur when I am not actually ON the elevator.

I know what you're thinking. You are thinking to yourself that that is just about the craziest thing you've ever heard. You are trying to think of a polite way to step back slowly and run away very fast. You are concerned that this kind of crazy might well be contagious. You are wondering if someone else is typing this for me because the strait jacket is too binding to type. The reason I know what you're thinking is NOT due to in any way to the hat that I made out of tinfoil, but because I have thought all of those things, and more. I am an anxious person by nature, but I usually have the low-grade type of anxiety running in the back of my head. Not the "OMG! Heart attack!" sort.

I have no idea why I am suddenly afraid of an elevator. Of this particular elevator. At this particular time. Is it because of stress? Is it a medication issue? Is it sleep deprivation catching up to me? Is it my hormones? Is it somebody else's?

I even went to my family doctor to talk to him about it. I told him that this was unusual for me, this being afraid of inanimate objects such as elevators. I told him that I was not an over-the-top anxious person. I told him that this sudden fear bothered me, because it is not the usual for me. I remarked that I was forcing myself to get on that damned elevator just to prove to myself that I can. I spoke for a long time about why this bothered me, and my doctor listened. He's good about listening. He listened, and then he gave me his opinion.

"Take the stairs," he said. And he wrote me a prescription for Welbutrin, which he said had helped people get over their anxieties, obsessions, and general weirdness.

Okay, so he didn't say anything about general weirdness. But I know that's what he was thinking.