fear factors

Currently reading:
SuperSelf
by Charles Givens



~*~*~*

My personal fears:
Ignominy
Seeing ghosts
Deep water
Looking foolish
Living alone
Dismemberment

...and worries:
Living a wasted life
Never having children
Having children who are gay
Losing my abilities
Never owning a home
Losing Patrick

~*~*~*

My book of the month, SuperSelf, advises one to conquer one's fears. The older we get, the more fears we accumulate and the more cautious we are, until we have drawn ourselves into a box so narrow and suffocating it might as well be a coffin. I've listed my primary fears and worries and the next step is to now select one and confront it "in a spirit of challenge and fun".

I've never had to live alone: I always lived either with relatives or in a multifamily residence of some kind. Being the only one in the building is frightening to me: no one to come looking for me, and no one to hear me scream. A person's phobias tend to be interrelated. In my case, being afraid of living alone is tied to the fear of seeing ghosts: the idea being that if I'm with someone, a ghost is less likely to pop up.

I know it's strange to hear a supposedly intelligent, modern woman talk about being afraid of ghosts, but if you grew up in the province like i did, you wouldn't be so sure. There are those who say that the Philippines is a portal of some sort, one of the few places in the world where the walls are thin between what we know as reality and the supernatural -- sort of like Hellmouth in the Buffy TV series. Too many people have spoken to me about encounters with ghosts, spirits and angels for me to dismiss the possibility of having a similar experience in the future. For some reason I think that the day a ghost does appear before me, I'm going to freeze with fright and fall dead of a heart attack. I dunno.

I think a friend passed on a ghost to me. She was relating the experience of having seen the ghost, and I got the strangest, scary prickling sensation: like being watched, and also slowly being unable to breathe. I get that same feeling whenever I think about her (the ghost) or talk about her -- even now, at 2 p.m. in sunny Texas, while typing away at my keyboard, with Patrick in the next room.

I'm afraid of other silly B-rated horror-movie-type things when I'm alone: the dark, the underside of beds, mirror reflections, cabinets and closets. No, I didn't grow up with horror movies or tales of the Boogeyman. But when I'm by myself I'm not so sure there isn't a mangled arm waiting to grab me.

So much for overcoming my fears. I may just work myself up into that heart attack this afternoon. I'd better find something else to do.