I woke up this morning to see a large centipede on the ceiling above my bed. (I googled centipedes-apparently they come out in the fall in droves and my garden apartment is like, the best place for them!) Since he was not moving and I was groggy, I did not feel any fear like I used to. I felt a bit repulsed (is that another form of fear?) but not motivated enough to find a way to reach it and kill it. I used to 'fear' spiders too....
But so anyway, I was just thinking about fear. How many different types of fear there are, and all the times in my life I have been afraid of irrational and also completely rational things. The near car accidents, the actual car accidents, falling/slipping down stairs, thinking about losing something or someone, being alone, doing something you have never done before, watching movies... Remember 'Watcher in the Woods'? Everybody I know who saw this Disney movie when they were younger swears to this day it was the SCARIEST they have ever seen. I must have seen it when I was eight, and man....but you know I believe if I saw it today it would not be scary.
Living alone makes me a little jumpy. Today I opened the back door and looming above me was this great imposing figure standing on the stairwell framed against the dawn light. My heart immediately went from 0 to 70. In the span of a second, I thought "Who or what is this creature at my back door, how did it get here through the locked gate and if I shut the door will it go away or disappear?" Then I realized it was the trash bin, and it had been moved from it's position slightly as it was emptied the previous day. Relief flowed through me and the humor of my mistake settled in and calmed the frazzled nerves, but I know this is not the last time something like this will happen.
A couple of years ago I actually rented "The Birds"1963 "The Haunting" 1963, "House on Haunted Hill" 1959 and watched them all again in an attempt to dispel some of the worse remembered fears of my life. I had viewed each at the tender age of 6. And for years the images would haunt me. (Ha ha, I said haunt.) I made my boyfriend of the time sit up with me through the movies, trying to recreate this romantic ideal-me afraid, he protecting. Yeah, he fell asleep, the bastard. 15 minutes into the first movie. I kept waking him and he kept stirring: "Huh? huh? Oh, it's ok, uh, Leslie" at which point he would pat me on the shoulder and fall back asleep. I was infuriorated.
And scared out of my wits. "The Birds-- not so scary, but the other two? DO NOT WATCH ALONE IN A BIG HOUSE AT NIGHT. That's my advice. Scary at 6, still scary at 25. I think that's how old I was when I last watched them. Maybe 24, I don't remember. Either way, I am not likely to re-watch them in my 30s in hopes of conquering fears again. Silly me, you know? Truly good films because of it, I must say.
The scariest book I ever read was IT. And the once recurring nightmare that spawned from my reading that book in high school has brought me to the realization today, of the number 1 most scary "thing" for me! Everybody has a thing they are most 'fraid of. As of today, I am aware that the concept of being seen by someone or something THAT SHOULD NOT be able to see you is the scariest thing for me.
In my nightmare, I was sitting in the dining room of my parent's house on a sunny summer day. The front door to the porch was open, and from my seat, I could see through my dining room, through the living room, out through the blinds of the windows on the front porch to see the cars pass by on the street, the neighbors across the street mowing, and I could even see a bit of cars that drove down the alley behind the houses across the street. Now, there is no way any person in that alley across the street would be able to see me. He/She might see a sliver of my house, but not view into the house three rooms back on a sunny day and see me. It would be too dark. You know what I am talking about. But It did see me. He was walking through that alley and he stopped and turned slowly, looking directly at me with a huge razor teeth grin and saw me looking at him. He lifted one large clown foot and stepped in my direction. He came traipsing through the bushes of someone's backyard and then down the hilly lawn of their front lawn and started to cross the street all the while staring at me and grinning. And growing as he did too, in height. He started off being 'normal man height' and grew to be about 8 or 9 feet tall-and he approached my front door and I couldn't move. I couldn't warn my family, most of which were sitting on the living room floor and would be eaten first.....they didn't know he was coming...That was the dream. I was so terrified. It happened several times over the course of years. I haven't had that dream for a long time. Inability to hide, I guess, if I could psychoanalyze that shiznit-I wanted to be invisible but the monster would always see me seek me out....
Anyway, I was on the train the other day and looking at the buildings as we flew by them and through the cloudy pained glass of one building, a silhouette of a figure stood there staring out. (And I remembered "Jacob's Ladder" when he sees those figures looking at him from the train....) And I imagined it standing there, waiting for my train to pass, because it knew I was going to be there.....and it was watching me even though it shouldn't have been able to see me. Ok, I am done. Let me give a literary shudder. There. Now I have to actually work......
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