Day 19: Five fears I have.
This story would have been more interesting about 35 years ago. Back then I was afraid of just about everything.
But I guess, as we grow up, train, and live through stuff well, fear becomes just another emotion. I still have a healthy fear of things that I should be scare of guns, politics, and such. But I’ve learned, for the most part, how to move through being uncomfortable before fear kicks in. I also have some training and skills to use to calm down and deal. Plus, I have Ken.
I can’t think of five fears, but I do have two really unreasonable ones. Two fears that have absolutely no basis in reality. I’ve no idea why I have them, but I do.
Frogs. Frogs are bad. I do not like frogs. It doesn’t matter to me if I’m afraid of them or just don’t like them. If I see I frog – I’m running the other way. I don’t even want to see photos of frogs, or speak of frogs, even writing this is making my heart race a bit. By the way, I do not like being teased about this either.
I’ll just say it, frogs are bad! They scare the shit out of me and are known to jump up your pant leg. I can’t imagine anyone would be okay with that!
The other fear I have comes on out of the blue, usually when I’m in Hawaii. Always, when I least expect it. Before I know it, I am on crawling on all fours, crying, or frozen in my tracks.
Lava. Yup – lava.
I’ve had several experiences where I get paralyzed with fear when I walk on lava.
I’m not talking hot molten lava, that would be a reasonable fear. No, I’m talking about the stuff at the John Day fossil beds in Oregon, or like I said, the lava rock that pretty well covers Hawaii.
Large beds of lava rock bring out an uncontrollable fear in me. My mind knows it is silly, but my body gets freaked; I start to cry, shake, sweat and tremble.
Do not ask me to explain. I can’t. I just know that walking on lava rocks, especially in those two places really scares me.
Right now, I have a real fear for my friend John Ridsel.
Sometimes I fear I will disappoint the people who love me. (especially Ken.)
But, for this exercise – I’m going with frogs and lava. Because – they are fucking frogs and scary lava.
Tomorrows topic: Put your music on shuffle and write about the first three songs that play and what your initial thought is.
Spiders. There was a spider in the garage the other day hanging from the ceiling in front of the freezer. I was brave enough to grab a long long stick, and wave it above the spider so that the spider fell. Then I dropped the stick and ran out of the garage like … like… very very quickly. It wasn’t even a big spider. One time I lived in an apartment and there was a very very big , very very fast moving spider in the bathroom. I was all alone at the time. I ran out of the apartment. It was many months before I went back into that bathroom. It had been “my” bathroom. I can’t think of any other fears of mine that aren’t grounded in reality (like the fear of Donald Trump becoming president, etc).