Tag Archives: fear

Making Fun Of My Fear Makes Me Braver. Probably.

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Remember when I posted about my Riddikulus theory about fears known worldwide as “The Boggart Theory”? Well, this post is me trying to put that into practice. I have to get on an airplane tomorrow and I am anxious to say the least and TERRIFIED to say the most. Especially because my last flights were absolutely pee in your pants scary and I’m not exactly great at flying under the best of conditions, so yeah, cue terror. However, as per my Boggart theory, I’m going to try and turn this fear into something funny so it doesn’t seem so scary after all. So, this is that.

Hey fear of flying on airplanes! You’re so ugly that Hello Kitty said Goodbye to you! BAZINGA!

You think you’re too cool for school don’t you fear of flying? Well, I have news for you, you aren’t. (I’ll admit it, I stole that directly from Zoolander)

Hey! Fear of flying! You’re a dumbass! BOOM!

So, it seems like maybe I’m not great at mocking my fears. Maybe sarcasm?

Yeah, fear of flying, you’re *so* scary. I’m like shaking in my boots. (Eye roll)

Fear of flying you’re the coolest of all fears. Not. (Eye roll)

Ok-I feel a little more comfortable with sarcasm but I think I’m still missing the optimum way to funny my fears into non-existence. Any suggestions?

Things I Worry About

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I’m the girl who worries about things like….

Sneezing with my eyes open and causing my eyeballs to pop out. Even though Mythbusters assures me this isn’t a thing that can happen, I have to wonder how seriously I can take two guys who shot a cannonball through someone’s home.

Falling asleep too close to someone else and then breathing in the carbon dioxide they breathed out and dying of carbon dioxide poisoning in my sleep. Again, I’m fairly sure this can’t happen. Especially because when I googled it, the first result was about how to cuddle properly. If google isn’t taking it seriously, I probably shouldn’t either. And yet….I do.

Getting bitten by a poisonous spider because my carpet isn’t vacuumed enough. Honestly, this one doesn’t even make sense to me. I’m really not sure why I think well vacuumed floors keep poisonous spiders away.

Dinosaurs coming back. I literally have nightmares about this one. I mean, hasn’t anyone seen Jurassic Park??! We should all be worrying about this.

What do you worry about?

At What Point Am I Allowed To Panic?

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airplane

I’ve been on a few airplanes lately and I’m really not the best flyer in the world. I don’t freak out or anything, at least not that anyone would notice. All my freaking out is internal and mostly just involves me closing my eyes and trying to talk myself out of picturing the plane crashing. I’m pretty good at calming myself down, but it doesn’t help when the pilot says this on the intercom…

“Good evening folks. The magic boxes in front of me indicate we will be arriving at our destination on time.”

Um….”magic box”. MAGIC BOX???!! Can I please get a pilot who relies on more than magic to fly the plane? Sure, I know he was trying to be funny and usually I would really appreciate that, but not when we are thousands of miles in the air and aren’t issued parachutes. I need a pilot who refers to all the airplane equipment by their technical names and maybe also cites statistics on how safe flying is to alleviate people’s fears. And also sounds like James Earl Jones. I would feel a lot more reassured about flying if the voice of Mufasa was telling me how safe it was.

I mean, at what point is it reasonable for me to panic? If it’s not when your pilot refers to his equipment as “magic boxes” then I don’t know when it is. All I’m saying is, if he wants to joke around, at least let me bring a parachute on board. Or make the booze free. Otherwise, I’m panicking.

Killer Birds!!!

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scary crow

Devil bird.

I was just sitting in my fourth floor office, working away like the little worker bee I am when all of the sudden a huge scary face appeared in my window. My heart skipped a beat, I jumped about a mile in the air, and an almost inaudible screech escaped my lips. I was startled to say the least. Luckily, reason soon returned and I realized quickly it couldn’t be a face in the window- I work on the fourth floor. Unless someone has jumped a few steps in evolution and is now capable of flying there is no way a face could be in my window. Or you know, I guess it could have been a window-washer but flying makes for a much better story. Anyway, I guess it doesn’t really matter since it wasn’t a person at all, I’m just saying a flying person would be cool.

What that scary face actually was, was a devil crow bent on my destruction. That bird was so scary it actually scared the hell into me instead of out of me. And it just kept coming back and flying right at my window and terrifying me. This bird was like super smart/evil. It was using my peripheral vision against me. It’s like the devil crow knew I could only catch a quick view of it and that I might misinterpret that quick view as something like an evil floating face, or ghost, or evil sprite. Which, by the way, are all really reasonable conclusions to jump to when images of things appear in your window. And the devil crow knew this. It knew me. It knew all my thoughts and fears and hopes and dreams and was trying to use them against me. Like Freddy Krueger uses dreams against people to kill them. That’s Freddy Krueger right? I don’t really watch scary movies because my imagination is already pretty overactive and a little twisted and I don’t really need to add more things to freak myself out with. The point is that the devil bird was some kind of evil genius bird that for some reason unbeknownst to me was hell-bent on scaring me to death. And maybe possessing my soul. I’m not too clear on the details.

The worst part was the devil bird brought friends. More and more evil birds flew at my window. And now I think I’m cursed. I mean, that many devil birds outside your office window means you’re cursed right? I’m totally cursed. These birds want blood. My blood. Aw geez. This is bad you guys. Death by killer devil birds.

The Birds

Not even Alfred Hitchcock could figure out a way for me to get out of this. I’m doomed.

Flirtation Failure

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Flirtation Flirt Magazine

If I'm hiding in a box it's to jump out and scare you, not flirt with you. Fail.

Hi- my name is Girl on the Contrary and I am a flirtation failure.

I apparently missed that day in high school when cupid or St. Valentine or Rico Suave comes to class and teaches you how to flirt. I must have been sick because I don’t know the first thing about flirting. I don’t like to flirt and even if I did I couldn’t because I am so very very bad at it. This is the gravity of the situation-  even my Mom thinks I’m a bad flirter- like, she thinks I am really really incredibly bad at it. The woman only speaks the truth.  And I know it. I know I’m not good at it, but is it something that you ( and by you I mean me) can learn? Also, if flirting can be learned, can I be bothered to learn it?

As it turns out, flirting is like being nice. Really nice. So I think that might be my first problem. It’s not that I’m not nice. I’m really nice to people in general but, if you act stupid or say something ridiculous I will definitely without hesitation make fun of you and probably turn it into a blog post. And it seems that some people don’t find being made fun of attractive. Huh. Interesting. So that’s one problem I have.

Another problem would be the paralyzing shyness I have when interacting with attractive males. The way I overcome this is to physically hide or run away. I’m perfectly content to do either one. In fact, I’m rather good at it. I’m like a champion hider. No one on this planet can beat me at a game of hide and seek. Those guys probably don’t even notice me anyway because I’m not making eye contact with them. I am keeping my head down and looking for a good hidey-hole. Or I am walking as quickly as possible away from them so they can’t speak to me. Not that they would, but just in case they were lost and needed directions, I need to get away fast. So, I guess that’s strike two.

Anytime I have ever flirted (or attempted unsuccessfully to flirt) I have felt like a complete and total moron afterwards. Like, I think back on what I said and I can’t help but feel that I acted a fool.  Everything I say sounds like it is coming from an insecure 13 year old. I lose my mind when I’m trying to flirt. I become uninteresting and vapid and silly. It just doesn’t feel natural. Can’t I just be myself and attract someone? The answer to that is no. No, I can’t be myself and attract someone. Strike three. I’m out.

So I think I’m just going to have to accept that I am a flirtation failure. Isn’t acceptance the first step to something? Like enlightenment? I mean, I could work on some of these issues and really put myself out there but…..yeah, no. Probably not. Better to stay inside this utility closet I found to hide in and think of witty things to blog about.

Unheard

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Something really bizarre happened yesterday night. I was in a very deep sleep when a huge crash accompanied by the sound of breaking glass woke me up. The sound is certainly what woke me up but I didn’t completely realize I was awake until I heard myself screaming. I immediately shut my mouth and struggled for orientation. My heart was pounding out of my chest and adrenaline was surging through my body. What the hell was going on in my house at 1:30 in the morning? While I am a vivid dreamer I knew that the crash and glass were real and I was painfully aware of how loud my scream had been. I grabbed my flashlight (which I always keep on my  night-stand, a habit I picked up in Uganda) and got out of bed. Then, I just stood there for a couple minutes. What was the sound I heard? Where had it come from? I stood in silence and realized I hadn’t heard anything since the crash, that was odd. My parents had to have heard it ; they had to have heard me screaming. I knew something was wrong. A crash, glass breaking, woman screaming- these are all things that tend to wake people up and yet my house was as quiet as a cemetery.

I’m not someone who waits around, I knew something was off and instead of waiting  for anything to happen I decided to take my flashlight and find out on my own what was going on. In the back of my mind I was worried and definitely scared, nothing was making any sense. Usually, Girl screaming (me)= Parents rushing to see what was going on. So, when my parents didn’t come rushing to see what would cause me to scream I knew something was wrong. Thanks to reading every Nancy Drew book ever, I knew how to proceed. I turned on my flashlight, quietly opened my door, and walked into the hallway ready to face whatever. I checked every corner of my sister’s bedroom, the guest room, and the game room and discovered nothing. Obviously whatever it was, it was downstairs. Wrong. I walked towards the top of the stairs when my flashlight glinted off something- broken glass. I pointed my flashlight in the corner and saw a large framed picture lying face-down on the ground surrounded by bits of glass. That picture and my room share two sides of the same wall, obviously that was the crash that woke me up. For an instant I felt relieved, then I realized I still had a mystery on my hands. How had my parents not heard the crash or my scream? I walked downstairs, less scared but still worried. My Mom usually hears everything. I did a quick sweep of our living room, dining room, and family room with my flashlight (Nancy Drew would never have skipped that) and saw nothing out of place. Then I walked to my parents room. Their door was shut and I couldn’t hear any noise coming from their room. No noise but the sound of their very loud fan. The loud fan they only use when our neighbors dog is barking because it drowns out all outside noise.

So, while it was very weird that a large picture that has hung on the wall for 2 years would mysteriously fall off that same wall at 1:30 am, it seemed that there wasn’t actually anything dangerous going on in my house. I went back up to my room, shut the door, sat on my bed, and promptly started crying. It was such a relief and my adrenaline was pumping so hard that I’m sure you will forgive me for being a bit silly. It was hard for me to go to sleep after that so I stayed up reading for a few more hours until my heart rate slowed and my body relaxed. The next morning my Mom came to my door trying to figure out why the picture was laying on the floor surrounded by glass. I told her the whole story. She hadn’t heard a thing (FYI, loud fan+closed door+NyQuil for her cold = Mom sleeping like the dead). We laughed about it a bit, cleaned up the glass, and went about our days.

Something about that bizarre night continued bothering me though. Then I remembered a dream I had when I was 7. Lions were attacking my family and right when one was about to kill me I woke up screaming. No one heard me. I remember waiting for what seemed like hours for my Mom or Dad to check on me and ask why I had screamed. Nobody ever came and I eventually fell back asleep. Maybe I hadn’t really screamed, maybe that time it was all in my dream, Mom and Dad (whose bedroom was right next to mine at the time) certainly hadn’t heard anything, but I always felt a little like I had been left adrift. And this time, I know I screamed out loud and in reality and nobody heard me and I keep thinking about how in horror films the bad guy always says “You can scream but nobody will hear you.” and I feel that.

My scary night ended up only being strange circumstances and I had nothing at all to be afraid of the whole time. And even though I’m not at all frightened now, I can’t help but think about how my screams go unheard.