Scared

I’m scared of so many things that it’s a miracle I haven’t decided to seek help from divine sources! Perhaps my stubborn muleheadedness keeps me plodding on, ignoring these things most of the time and just enjoying life as it comes along. Sometimes at night when I can’t sleep, it catches up with me. Other times, when it’s that overly emotional time of the month, these little fears scumble over my usual calm demeanor and make me despair for two or three days. At other times, lack of sleep weakens my silly head and they seep through the cracks to haunt me and I burst into tears from the smallest things: roadkill, a love scene on tv. Usually I am the stoic “I will not cry because this is not real”-type when it comes to series and films, but when the fear strikes I’m as weepy as the most menopausal, moody middle-aged woman.

My fears are normal little things. Boring things. I know this, and still they persist, nibbling at my edges, fraying them a little, but unable to destroy past the zig-zag stitching that lines the straight ones keeping me together.

I’m afraid of needles. Not sewing needles or knitting needles, or the ones without a pointy bit that you squirt sticky medicine into the unwilling mouths of cats so desperate to avoid these 3 milliliters of antibiotics that they become as slippery as a soap bar in the shower. I mean the real syringes. The monstrosities used for spinal taps, drawing blood, and injecting vaccines against diseases of varying lethality. For some reason, the small, narrow ones that squirt Novocaine into your gums are fine, but the rest will have me nearly in a dead faint. Looking at the process or turning my head away makes no difference - the knowledge and feeling of what is going on is terrible enough.
It’s an irrational fear I can’t explain. It doesn’t hurt that much, although the Hepatitis B booster shot felt uncomfortable in a truly terrible way. I don’t feel as though I am in any danger either, assuming the needle is clean. And I’m not afraid of blood either, although I did feel a little faint when I had a proper jet squirting in an upside down U from the vein in my left hand.
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I think this fear is related to that of doctor’s tools. I cannot stand looking at things being methodically burrowed into, sliced apart, pinned back… and yet somehow I’ve managed to do several dissections without feeling the slightest bit green or grey. When a veterinarian showed an X-Ray of my cat’s smashed hip and began to explain what it was and how it must feel and what must have happened, it was all I could do not to lose my lunch.

Ah, the fear of losing my cat, interlinked with that of something terrible happening to other people I care about. Yes, I am one of those sad saps who would rank a 14-year old furry little beast as high as the less furry beasts generally classified as “family”. When someone is missing for a while, my mind plays back scenarios of what could have happened. But these are always bearable and I don’t pay them enough heed for this to count as one of my <i>real</i> fears.

I have a fear of sailing boats. Or rather, I do not fear them but automatically become seasick upon being on a boat for more than 15 minutes that is not docked and that has a sail, no matter how calm the water is. Staring at the horizon does not work. The only thing I can do is curl up and close my eyes and imagine I am inside a gently rocking crib. This one I actually know the origin of - the fateful class trip from Helsinki to Åland on the sailing boat “Albanus”, where we crossed waves so choppy that people flew out of their bunk beds and cupboards opened to spill their contents on peoples heads.

I fear losing my love. I fear he’ll grow bored of me and run away without telling me a word until he shows up two years later to confess that he was indeed not dead, but merely decided that this would be a brilliant way to break up. I fear he’ll become cold, or tired of the distance and give up on me, breaking about the growing dreams that I dare to feed and harbor even against my pessimistic nature. I fear the words, “I don’t love you.” I fear losing the warm, tight hugs and soft soft quiet kisses, the knowledge that there is someone there for me that I can grow old with. I am afraid of becoming cruel and manipulative, bossy and overbearing, causing him more hurt and sadness and frustration than good.

I’m afraid of head lice. In fact, I’m afraid of all manners of parasites. Ticks, tapeworms, hookworms, fleas, leaches… I even used to fear mosquitoes. The sound of one would have me in a near-hysterical frenzy, trying to kill the bloodsucker before it could nip me. A trip to the Laplandish swamps in the beginning of summer cured this. Shock therapy. Contrary to this, my English encounters with head lice have not made me more receptive to them - merely more experienced in dealing with them. My fear of leaches was curbed by the knowledge that it’s really quite hard to get them in the places I go. I have had the displeasure of hosting a fungus brought on by a long antibiotic cure and felt the frightful disgust with myself that I feel with any other parasite. I’ve been lucky enough not to experience any of the other aggravating monstrosities I’ve listed and yet I know I would turn into a nearly self-mutilating but certainly self-hating perpetually angry creature gibbering curses and threats upon the uninvited guests until I managed to successfully expel them.

I’m afraid of losing. I don’t like trying a game until I’ve seen others playing it and have gauged whether I would possibly be able to have the slightest chance of success or at least enjoy losing. This keeps me from competing against others when I find it challenge enough to do so against myself. It makes me dislike playing games where there is no victory, only a high score brought on by surviving as long as you possibly can against increasing masses of aliens or paratroopers.

I’m afraid of creeps and stalkers and people who believe in their horoscopes to the last letter. I’m afraid of drunk people - the truly drunk ones who revert into blathering, ranting, frothing things that inadvertently destroy things in their attempts to stay upright.

I’m scared of being trapped in small places. I hate elevators that stop or make strange sounds, or the feeling of sitting in a car or airplane with so little space between the seats that I cannot even move my feet or have to take my shoes off to be able to get up and out of the seat.

I am a timorous little thing when it comes to the right catalysts. Spiders and snakes and loud noises won’t work on me. All you need is me trapped in an elevator with a headlice-infested creepy stalker wielding a syringe while my love has said he will break up with me if I do not meet him within two minutes and kill my cat… :D