Inspired by Toni’s post yesterday about phobias, I thought to myself: hey! I have me some phobias too! In fact, my mind, it is a strange, creepy town riddled with dark, twisting alleyways which I bet the Forever Amber readers would just love to explore. In other words: I’m a bit strange, me, and unless you’d like to hear about the brief snowfall we had yesterday, I got nothing for you here, so I’m just going to copy Toni take a leaf out of Toni’s book and tell you all about all the things that keep me awake at night.

So here we go – a quick tour through my troubled psyche, or “the things I have phobias about”.

1. Crabs and other crustaceans. But mostly crabs. (‘kabourophobia’)

I’ve touched on this before, but as Terry will tell you, I’ve never been one to shy away from the idea of repeating myself – I said, I’ve never been one to shy away from the idea of repeating myself – so let the record show that by far the biggest phobia in my life is the fear of crabs, lobsters, and anything else that lives in the sea, has a shell, and operates more than four legs, some of which contain pincers. So bad is this phobia, in fact, that I wasn’t able to copy Toni and show you little pictures of the things I’m scared of, because that would involve looking at pictures of crabs, and would then mean that I wasn’t able to view my own blog for as long as it takes for this post to drop off the front page. Yeah, I hate those suckers.

The phobia is so severe, you see, that I can’t even look at pictures of crustaceans, and when we’re in Florida, and we go to Publix, which has live lobsters in a tank (so that people can just pick them up! With their HANDS! AAAAAARRRRRGH!) I have to close my eyes so that my mum can guide me past it. If I do happen to see a crab, or a picture of a crab, I will generally drop any object I happen to be holding at the time, and I wake up a few times every month standing screaming next to the bed, having just leapt from it in terror, convinced that there are crabs in it. Because, you know how that’s always happening?

Despite this, as I noted on my last entry about this, fear of crustaceans is actually quite a good phobia to have, if you’re going to have a phobia, because the feckers don’t generally travel inland, so unless you live by the sea, you’re good. So, yes, ‘kabourophobia’: recommended. Only, not really.

2. Flying

Like Toni, my fear of flying arrived one day out of a clear blue sky, with absolutely no prior warning. Up until that point I had been flying through the skies with the greatest of ease, and without a single clutching-of-the-armrest moment. Then one day when I was kid, as the plane taxied along the runway, I sat bolt upright in my seat and started screaming, “I WANT TO GET OFF! I WANT TO GET OFF! AAAARGH!” Which I would imagine was probably a little disconcerting for my fellow nervous fliers. I mean, if I was on a plane and a kid started doing that, I’d be the one struggling to free myself from my seat belt  and shouting, “THE LITTLE GIRL KNOWS SOMETHING! TURN THE PLANE AROUND”

As it was, I obviously didn’t “know something”, but every time I fly, I am burdened with the thought that I do. Every single time I get onto a plane I am overwhelmed with the certain knowledge that THIS IS HOW I AM GOING TO DIE, and I then get to pass an uncomfortable few hours wondering if I should, perhaps, tell someone about my “feeling”, my instinct that the flight is DOOMED, DOOMED I TELLS YA!

Incidentally, the fact that I have never yet been in a plane crash (or, indeed, had a particularly turbulent flight) does nothing to assuage my fears: all it proves is that it hasn’t happened yet, and by “it” I mean “the crash that will kill me.” It’s coming. I know it.

3. People who rub their feet together while wearing socks

I don’t think this one has a proper “phobia” name, so maybe it’s not a “proper” phobia, who knows. All I can tell you is that while the sight of someone rubbing their feet together while wearing socks doesn’t frighten me, the way crustaceans do, it does make me want to run out of the room screaming “STOP RUBBING YOUR FEET TOGETHER!” And sometimes I actually do. Sorry, dad. There’s just something about that “cotton on cotton” thing that just sets my teeth on edge (See also: wet towels, touching of) although, to be honest, bare feet rubbing together is almost as bad. Yeuch.

4. Actually, just socks in general, really

I hate almost everything about them. I will wear them when I absolutely have to (unlike crustaceans, unfortunately, they’re pretty hard to avoid), but I hate the look of them, and, more importantly, hate the feel of them on my feet. Just thinking about them makes me feel ill. This phobia has been ongoing for most of my life, and dates back to my early childhood, when I would reluctantly wear the socks my mum forced upon me, but would pull the toes off them away from my feet so that the socks ended up about 20 feet long, but at least didn’t come into contact with my toes.  Urgh.

5. Being beheaded

Again, I’m not sure this counts as a “proper” phobia, because let’s face it – no one really enjoys a beheading, do they? Well, no one except Henry VIII, who doesn’t really count, on account of being dead and all. I do, however, have a horror of decapitation that makes me unable to read about it, see it in a movie or otherwise think about it without being seriously disturbed for quite a long time afterwards. In fact, I’m pretty sure I think about being beheaded far more than is really healthy. (Is there a particular amount of “thinking about being beheaded” time that IS healthy, though, I wonder?) Luckily this is not a scenario I’m ever likely to face, but as I type this, I’ve kind of tucked my neck down into my shoulders, tortoise style, and am contemplating having a stiff drink to get the horrible images out of my head…

6. Very deep water

Not just because it could contain crabs and other crustaceans, but because… well, because who knows WHAT it might contain? It’s also dark, creepy, and very far away from an environment in which we could actually survive, which is probably why I’m sitting here struggling for breath as I write this, with the thought of sinking ships and bodies of Very Deep Water at the forefront of my mind. It’s also the reason why flying across the Atlantic is a particularly mind bending experience for me…

ETA… Having written this a couple of days ago, I suddenly realised I’d missed out some of my biggest phobias completely. Because I am stupid, obviously. So, er, here they are…

(more…)