All the Shit That Scares Me To Death

1. Clowns

I think this is a 90′s thing, because I know a lot of peeps who got the living hell scared out of them by the movie “It.” In this Stephen King film an evil clown runs around town and eats little children. Haven’t seen it? It’s probably boring for a grownup, but for a little kid, I assure you, it’s one of the scariest things ever. So don’t let Junior sit through this one, unless you want a permanently scarred brat on your hands. My parents, being all respectable as they were, didn’t allow me to watch scary stuff like that but luckyly for me, reruns ran one Friday when my parents were out on the town and the only one who I needed to doop was my baby brothers babysitter. Long story short, I didn’t sleep soundly for months, and I still can’t help but hiding behind a friend or running away hysterically screaming for help if I spot a clown in the distance gunning for me.  (If there was ever any doubt why people don’t want to go out with me much.)

2. Scary Movies/ Books

You’d think I’d learn something from my clown experience, like possibly, I shouldn’t be watching scary movies, right? Well, you’d be wrong. It took me till I was 17  and saw “the Ring” and “the Darkness,” which then made me sleep with the nightlight until I went to Uni and was too embarrassed to tell my roommate I can’t deal with the dark (this is a true story), and reading the book called Christine (again a Stephen King creation), which made me scared of my mom’s Chrysler for a half of year or so, before I finally figured out that I seriously can’t hack it, and I really should never, under any circumstances, feed my imagination with any sort of scary material. I haven’t watched a scary movie/read a horror book since, and I never will again. My sanity is worth something to me, now that I’m old.

3. Going Crazy

Sometimes, when I pass a person who is talking out loud when there is nobody next to them, or a psych ward scene comes up in a movie, I think about what happened to these people that made them behave in a way that isn’t acceptable in society and earned them the “crazy” badge. Everything, especially everything about how people act has its roots somewhere, nothing about a person ever just is. So if that’s the case, who’s to say  that the lady that’s stopping people on my block to tell them she’s scared (of what, I don’t know, she only ever says she’s scared) wasn’t a hot-shot business woman in some previous long lost life who had a nervous brake down after she was made redundant during the countries economic turmoil, or the love of her life left her or her kid died? How can we know that this person (or any other person we label and  dismiss as “crazy”) wasn’t once upon a time a normally functioning part of our machine, until the pressure became too intense and they simply snapped? Life  sometimes sucks and very bad things can happen to people, shattering them in the process. A professor once told my class, that all human begins in the modern world are borderline subjects, and I couldn’t agree with that more. Wether we like this about ourselves or not, we are fragile even when we are strong, and we each have an Achilles heel we hide under other names like family, job or health. All it takes is that heel to be hit, or hit on multiple consecutive occasions and anybody can be reduced to  a convulsing shape on the bathroom floor weeping for mommy, or showing a toothbrush down their throat to regurgitate dinner, or telling random folk on the street that they’re scared. People loose their mind all the time, some more publicly displayed than others, but  the scary bit here is, it always happens so quickly there is no way of stopping the snowball roll it until it’s too late. It’s just a mater of putting sufficient pressure on the weakest spot at the right time. And that shit’s scary.

4. Spiders

CLICHE ALERT! A chick that’s scared of spiders, I know right: how original! But this list wouldn’t be complete if I left out these little critters, because if there is anything in life I can’t deal with, nor have I got any intention of dealing with it EVER, it’s spiders. I HATE spiders. Their ugliness keeps me from even watching them on film or photographs without squeamishly trembling in disgust. I’m all for animals, but in my book, nothing that has 6 legs and 8 eyes (or vice versa), should be allowed to co-exist on the planet that is run by MY species.  Yes, yes, I know that even spiders have their important role to play out in the ecosystem, blah blah blah, and they are most welcome to play it, as long as I don’t have to look at them while they do it. Coming face to face with a spider always ends the same with me: I screech, run away, lock the spider in the room and call for backup. Then I sit in the corner and wait until somebody who doesn’t have severe acrophobia disposes of the spider, and I can once again step inside the room I deserted. If physical content with the spider was made, I go and have a little cry in the shower, trying to scrub away the memory of it’s little leg against my skin.

5. Getting Fat

I don’t have the personality to pull of fat, and this is why I must never EVER become a fatty. This is proving to be a task, as I am what you would describe as an “eater.” And I mean it too, I can eat, man o man, can I eat! Just now, while typing this I had a whole hummus and three pieces of flatbread for breakfast, alongside the obligatory two cups of coffee I need to feel human in the morning. It’s like my body is trying to get back at me for starving it when I was younger (and had far more discipline when it came to food), and now my stomach has as form of punishment turned into a bottomless pit, always in demand of  food. I could eat until I would explode, and it won’t surprise me, if one day, I will actually go KABOOM while stuffing s’mores in my mouth and y’all can have the final laugh at my expense. Until that day comes though, I will continue to eat 5000 calories a day and then jog for hours so that the lard doesn’t stick on my bum. It’s easier to run than it is to say no to Nutella.

6. Trucks

The fear of large transport vehicles stems from a traumatic experience, when a child of just 8 years old saw 5 people get smashed to mush by one of these monsters. My aunt was driving me from piano practice and we were literally a 100 meters away from my house when the truck driver a few cars behind us lost control of the vehicle on the slippery road (it was pouring down all day) and just started gliding along the road, taking out all the cars that got in its way. The car behind us got smashed as well, and I could well possibly be one of the victims of that accident, if my aunt hadn’t stepped on it and quickly ran her car of the road, landing us in the bushes where we were safe. The second the truck fell on its side and with that indicated the end of the bloodbath, and my aunt went:”Are you OK?”, I jumped out of her car and ran home where I threw up and shock-cried all afternoon. It wasn’t till later that day when I learned  how many people died in the crash and it wasn’t till years later when I realized how close my aunt and I were to being killed as well. To this day, I hold my breath and say a little prayer in my head if I have to overtake a truck on the road, and almost instinctively take a step back, close my eyes and clutch my fists in terror,  if I’m say, waiting on the crossing and I see one approaching.

7. Dying alone

I’m one of those people who are always single. Partly it’s because I have terrible taste in men and I like pushing away anybody who shows any sort of genuine affection towards me, and partly it’s because I’ve been single for so long that I actually enjoy being the only captain of this boat so much, I believe I have mutated to the point of becoming undatable. This bugs me never, the only time I have problems with being an all-time solo act  is when I look in the future and I see a lonely old lady, probably not surrounded by cats because I don’t dig them, but defo having no family or friends because they’re all dead (in this fantasy I’m uber old and I outlive everybody I ever loved , because mean and bitter people always do), no children (of course), and no significant other to bitch at. That’s the narrative society tells single people can look forward to in their old age, and call it what you will, but that there is some pretty messed up mumbo-jumbo. Especially if you add a little ill or crazy in the mixture, to give the lonely old age pie a little extra kick.  It’s that when I freak out about being #foreveralone and I sometimes panic about just that … dying without anybody  caring or even noticing. But then a calm voice in my head says:

“Listen, dear. You are not going to outlive any of your family nor friends, because you eat crap food, drink too much and do way too much drugs. Super old when you die? Bitch please, consider yourself lucky if you make it to fifty! Plus, do you think that finding a dude and putting a ring on his finger is a guarantee for company when your face will turn into prune? Hello, rising divorce rate! Hello, men bite the big one faster than women! Hello he would probably trade you in for a younger model once you lost all your front teeth! And having evil spawn doesn’t mean they’ll visit. It just means you gave birth to evil human beings.”

After I do this one-to-one with myself, I pour myself a glass of happy single wine, kick back and relax in my singledom, taking comfort in knowing that it doesn’t matter if I die alone, because YOU WILL TOO.