Do you know that feeling, when you’ve been getting enough sleep but nevertheless you feel so exhausted? I have it right now, and I think I’m going to blame it on the series of teeth nightmares my brain has been treating me to for the past week (ish). It’s hard to feel well-rested when you wake up everyday simultaneously pleased and surprised to find that your two front teeth aren’t sticking out at opposing angles.
I did a little spurious googling about the meaning behind teeth nightmares, because from what I’ve heard they’re pretty universal (I mean, my parents and some of my friends have had them- that’s universal, right?), and came up with stress and/or vanity. Pretty as I think I am, I think I’m inclined to blame stress given the deadly combination of music history midterm/Dad’s amputation/senior spring/graduation/what am I doing?/what is to become of me? anxiety.
But these teeth nightmares have gotten me thinking about other irrational fears. Not senior year fears because those are fairly rational, what with big life changes upcoming.
Do you have any irrational fears? I think everyone does. Are any of yours the same as mine?
- Ever since a young age I’ve had a paralyzing fear of someone running a knife along my teeth. It’s like nails on a chalkboard, but worse. And then if they started sawing at them? *Shudder*
- Spiders. I know, boring. But I used to be fine with spiders until they betrayed my trust. There’s actually a story here- I was dusting the barn rafters and started feeling this weird creeping on my skin. When I looked down my bare arms were covered in spiders and there were so many more descending on threads all around me. Either there had been a bunch in the duster or I had disturbed some arachnid orgy on the ceiling. Now we’re not friends anymore.
- I’ve always had an irrational fear of falling on my butt the wrong way and prying my tailbone off. This really started being a fear relating to falling on my bum on top of my own roller skate or sitting the wrong way on a saddle at the canter. And having your tailbone on one side and the rest on you on the other.
- The walk from my first floor to my room on the second floor after being the last one awake at night and having to turn off all of the lights. When I was little I imagined that the undead would emerge from the stairs and… I don’t know, the emerging business was scary enough. But even if I don’t worry about the undead anymore, I still don’t like that walk in the darkness.
- Sharks in swimming pools. I have an overactive imagination. At first this was just something I would perversely torture myself with during swimming lessons (and sometimes I would use it to make myself go faster) and now I can’t get it out of my head.
- Dying on a roller coaster. Just makes it more exciting, to be honest.
- Swimming and getting trapped in a cave or under a sheet of ice, unable to get to the surface and to air.
- Lorises. You may think that they’re some cute little pygmy primate but I’m here to tell you that really they are the wide-eyed serial killers of the night.
- Unlocked car doors. Even when I’m in the car. I obsessively lock car doors and it’snot just a holdover from living in the city because I leave my dorm unlocked (and sometimes my house) all the damn time. NO, it’s because of the Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark book where some escaped convict with a hook for a hand tries to get in their car and they find the hook hanging off the door when they try to get out. I’m not letting any convicts into the old Corolla, no thank you.
List Mimsy 