I wish my seven year old's problems would never grow larger than being afraid that a barracuda might come into his room while he's sleeping. I forget how little and vulnerable he still is sometimes.
I was terrified of the dark when I was little/a teenager/an adult. Other things too, but especially the dark. Actually, it wasn't until I separated from my ex husband that I got over it. After he moved out, many of my phobias left with him. Weird? Maybe it was because I couldn't project my sense of safety onto another person? No, that can't be it, because I am not alone now and the fear has not come back. I think maybe it was a build up of stress from that relationship that needed relief. And how I felt relief the evening he left. I cleaned up my kitchen that night. I watched TV. I smiled. I felt like I'd shed a heavy nightmare. I felt buoyant. So probably, it's that. My marriage was constipating my phobias and not allowing them to resolve themselves. I'm glad I sorted that. I'm practically Dr Phil. I wax my moustache off, though, TYVM.
I think having a prolonged immature array of phobias left me with a really solid understanding of the fears that kids have, though. I can easily put myself into the mind of a 7 year old who is afraid of a barracuda in his room in the dark. I can relate to the complete nonsensical part of it. He was a little embarrassed to tell me what was bothering him. He knows a barracuda can't get in the house or survive out of water.. but the phobia transcends that. Poor guy. We can relate with each other on our isopod/barracuda ocean animal hating level... I still worry that there might be an isopod in my hair from time to time, like when I'm driving.
So I told him what I thought would have made me feel better when I was 7. I told him that cats eat barracudas and we have 2 cats. Vicious, barracuda devouring cats. ( I didn't mention the declawed part about the vicious cats). So if a barracuda flopped all the way into our house from the ocean, it wouldn't stand a chance against Fluffy Sparkles & Smarties. He seemed to think that was pretty reasonable. Phew. Countering ridiculous information with even more ridiculous information is sometimes what you have to do. It's what I've always done, anyway. For example:
1. I refused to get into a pool if there was nobody else in it when I was a kid/teenager/adult. To me, if there was nobody in the pool, then there could definitely be a shark. It made weird sense to me. I could be just missing it every time I surveyed a different area of the pool. Like I had a shark blind spot. Other people in the pool would see the shark and scream, so it would be like having an extra set of eyes, making sure any and all sharks in the swimming pool had been spotted.
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| Never be the first person in. |
2. There might have been gremlins in the toilet if I didn't put the lid down as fast as possible after using it. There is no way those gremlins could lift that heavy toilet lid so putting it down ensured total safety.
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| Get out fast. |
3. There might have been skeletons in the closet if the door to it was closed. Not metaphorical ones... real ones. Skeletons were the some of the worst people I could imagine for a very, very long time. If the door was open, that meant no skeletons. If it was closed, it meant THEY closed it so that they could jump out as soon as my parents went to sleep.
4. A balloon might pop and fly into my throat and then I might choke to death. So I never, ever put balloons near my face of have them around the dinner table. The temptation is too much.
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| I'm not going to lie. I drew this one while laying down. You try drawing on a tablet while laying down. |
5. There might have been a black slug that crawled down the throats of my friends at school, taken over their brains and made them attack me. There was no way to counter this from happening. I just avoided my friends when they were dressed unusually. I blame Christopher Pike novels.
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| I'm not even kidding. |
6. Every night, walking from the bus to the house on days when the sun was down before I got home from school, I was sure was the night that aliens were finally going to abduct me and make me live in a slimy pod and I would never see my family or friends again.
7. There might have been earwigs in my pillows if the pillowcases were not freshly laundered.
8. There could have been a ghost in the bathroom mirror if the light was off when I went in there. Solution: Turn the light on super fast and jump away from the door. Wait for there to be no noises and enter when the coast is clear. Simple, you guys.
9. There might have been a timber wolf in the carport at night, waiting for me to get firewood for the house. Timber wolves are never there in the day, so I did my best to get all the wood out of the carport during daylight hours only.
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| My Dad may have been the one who told me there was a timber wolf in the carport. I also want everyone to appreciate my vast array of hairstyles. This one is the bang-wave of seventh grade. |
After a while, I discovered (I think by watching a really crappy Geena Davis and/or Julia Roberts movie, I can't really tell the difference) that you can not physically panic and sing at the same time. Yep- and it works like a drug. Cue my adoration of music.
It was hard for me to deal with knowing my fears were irrational. I didn't want people telling me that I was stupid to have them. Maybe we concoct these silly fears to counter the stress of real things that have happened to us? I don't know. Maybe I need to go pick up a book on the theory behind why we have dumb phobias and stop asking myself questions. Maybe I need to go eat some toast and bug Neil. The best part if it all is that this is the internet and I no longer live in fear that my phobias were the weirdest. So that's another phobia all wrapped up.
The good that came out of being crazy as a child/teenager/adult is that I know every trick to ward off scary things in the night from my kids' rooms. So far, I have been able to fend them all off for everyone. *parenting based on
I'm still not watching paranormal activity, though. Those dutch oven ghosts are more than I can handle.
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