Inception

"Dreams feel real while we're in them. It isn't until we wake up that we realize something was actually strange." -- Cobb

I have phobias. I mean true, crippling, life-affecting phobias. There are people who fear things, and they call these fears phobias, they are wrong. If you're afraid of spiders, you are not arachnophobic. If you have an irrational, intense and persistent fear of spiders that causes you to take outrageous efforts to avoid spiders, you are arachnophobic. So, when I say that I have phobias, I mean that I have three things in this world that I have a conscious, all-consuming, life-altering, persistent, intense, highly-irrational fear of three things/experiences/situations in my world. Most of my close friends know of one or two of them, but the third is going to be revealed for the very first time here, on Blogger. I figure if I talk about these phobias, I can inch toward taking care of them and letting them become something less than crippling. You are more than welcome to make fun of me and tease me and call me names. That is perfectly ok. I acknowledge how irrational these fears are, and have taken steps to try and be less afraid, including sharing them with my friends numerous times in the past. Every time, I am teased and belittled for them, so believe me, it will neither be a surprise or a shock. After the jump, I'll itemize them for you, in order from most-crippling, to least-crippling.

 1: The fear of contracting conjunctivitus. This is the best possible description of this phobia. There is no long outrageous name for it, I apologize. In fact, only one of my fears has a legitimate name associated with it from the physicians desk reference. This is simply, the fear of getting pink-eye. By extension, and more specifically, the fear of all things that can cause pink-eyes, including the old wive's tale about getting poop in your eye. In fact, I have a giant bottle of hand-sanitizer that I use every time I touch my pants, or a chair, or wipe my butt, or fart forcefully, or if I accidentally touch my eye, or if somebody else touches my eye, or my face, of my hair, or anything like that. Essentially, if there is even the slightest chance that poop or weird bacteria will get anywhere near my face I need to have my hand-sanitizer at hand. About a week ago, the stupid bitch who sits next to me at Netflix came to work with pink-eye. I freaking lost it. I had to move to the opposite side of the room and was on top of the hand sanitizer like nobody's business. I must have changed my gloves at least twelve times in three hours. I was terrified and wanted to kill her. I won't even look at most children if they have been exposed for fear that they will infect me with the loathsome death disease of pink eye.

I have NO clue where this phobia came from. I cannot recall a time in my life where I had pink eye. I cannot recall a time in my life where anybody I know, other than that bitch at work, had pink eye. I am just terrified of contracting it. It may have something to do with the idea that zombies were at one point, and occasionally still are, represented with blood-red eyes. I am not terrified of zombie though, which makes me wonder why I would be terrified of a side-effect of zombification, but not the zombies themselves. The world, and I, may never know.

2: The fear of having my dreams invaded, or affected, by somebody else. This is the one that I have never told anybody until now. Katrina alters her thoughts because she's afraid, or concerned, that people around her might be psychic. I have practiced lucid dreaming, and purchased numerous dream catchers in an effort to ward off the chance that an especially experienced, or closely-proximitied, lucid-dreamer can infiltrate, or change my dreams in some way, or worse steal them.

This has been a constant fear of mine from a relatively young age. I have been lucid-dreaming for as long as I can recall having dreams. It is in fact very rarely that I am not consciously aware that I'm dreaming. I have also practiced dream-control in an effort to maximize my sleeping time. My whole family is strangely psychic and, laugh if you want, we have a tendency toward prophetic dreams. Modern media has always liked to toy with the idea of infiltrating a person's dream for the sake of personal gain,

3: Tonitrophobia. Finally, something with a legitimate name for it. This is the fear of thunder. As an audiophile, I find myself torn because while I am fascinated by the different sounds of the world, and how they are made, I am terrified of thunder like nothing else in the entire universe. Let me clarify. I am not afraid of lightning. I am not afraid of storms. In fact, if anything, I am sexually excited and aroused by these things. No, I am scared only of thunder. The sound. If I am alone during a thunderstorm, you can expect to find me with ear plugs in, or listening to music very loudly. Strangely, loud sounds do not phase me in the slightest. It is only the distinct sound of thunder that causes this fear to show up.

If I am with another person, I am able to control my outward fear, but only barely. I will still cringe, or tense up when thunder rolls, but I am capable of holding back my tears, usually. Eventually though, I excuse myself from their company, or if we are especially close, I will bury myself in his, or her, armpit and pray for it to end. I know the root of this fear too which makes it easier to understand, since it didn't surface until my last year in Arizona. If so much of my family didn't read this blog, I'd share the story of my first lsd trip and why it instilled this fear into me. If you ever want to hear it, give me a call sometime.

So there you have it. Three totally outrageous and highly irrational fears/phobias. Tell me reader, do you have any phobias? how about fears? On the flip-side, do you have any ... -philiae(philias? philii?)? That's not a word, but you know what it means.