Phobia
Authors: Mandy White
Phobia
Mandy White
Kindle Edition
Published at Kindle Direct
Copyright © Mandy White 2014
All rights reserved
This work may not be copied in full or in part by anyone without expressed permission from the author.
This is a work of fiction, written for entertainment purposes only.
Any resemblance to actual persons alive or dead is merely coincidence. All characters are products of the author’s imagination.
Acknowledgements:
Thanks to my family, for putting up with my hours of self-imposed isolation while writing this and other books.
A warm fuzzy hug to my ‘Wolf Pack’, otherwise known as Writers, Poets and Deviants. You are my second family, and each one of you holds a special piece of my heart.
~*~
18 ~ Kick the Devil in the Nuts
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The Good Husband ~ A Short Story by Mandy White
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~ 1 ~
“I’ve always been afraid of losing control.
I’m not some kind of control freak, like those people who always have to be in charge and act like the boss of everyone. I’m talking about irrational fears – phobias.
Take my fear of heights, for example. It’s not the height itself that scares me. I enjoy a good view as much as the next person.
I’m afraid of myself.
I’m afraid to stand too close to the edge of a cliff or a high rooftop, but not because I think I’ll accidentally trip or lose my balance.
I fear a lapse of sanity.
I’m afraid that for just a few seconds, I will lose control of my faculties and run full tilt off the edge, laughing like a lunatic. I would regain my senses and realize what I had done too late to stop it from happening.
If I find myself in a high place, I stay as far from the edge as possible. Logic tells me I am safe, but inside I feel it – that magnetic pull toward the edge where the maniac inside my head wants to run.
I’m not suicidal. I can hear you making assumptions and questioning whether an intervention is in order. A suicidal person wants to die – I don’t.
It’s self-preservation that makes me afraid. If I wanted to kill myself, my feelings probably wouldn’t change the moment I jumped. I’d just sail over the edge and go splat.
I’m afraid that the temporary lapse of sanity I feel inside could fight its way to the surface at any moment and make me do things I wouldn’t ordinarily do.
It’s that sort of thing that feeds my phobias. My mind plays out a little ‘what if’ scenario, filling in the details until it feels like it’s already happened. I see the potential for disaster in ordinary situations. Roofs and cliffs become bridges and rivers; standing becomes driving. How easy would it be just to drive off a cliff or veer into oncoming traffic? I now know it isn’t safe for me to drive. I proved that when I had the accident.
Walking is also risky. What if I suddenly lost my mind and ran into traffic? Or what if some driver had a heart attack and ran me down on the sidewalk? What if… what if… the possibilities are endless.
I’m afraid to go boating or take a ferry in case I get a sudden urge to jump overboard. I never learned to swim because I’m afraid of being underwater. Flying? Forget it. What if I happened to lose control while going through security in an airport and got shot down as a terrorist?
See? I’m not suicidal. In fact, it’s just the opposite. I live in constant fear for my safety.
Control equals safety. Safety keeps fears at bay.
Phobias are every bit as crippling as physical disabilities. Scoff all you want, I don’t care. Take social anxiety, for example. It’s the engine that drives a lot of my phobias. Essentially, I’m afraid of people. Why? I’ve been around people all my life and learned the necessary social skills at an early age, so what the hell is so scary about interacting with people?
It’s fear of ridicule, embarrassment, of being singled out and stared at, laughed at and called names.
Fear of losing control of the situation.
Picture this scenario, as insane as it sounds:
I’m carrying on a conversation with someone I don’t know very well – maybe a salesperson, a business associate, or an acquaintance I ran into at the mall. Suddenly the familiar fear begins to rise – that fear of a brief lapse of sanity. What if I suddenly lost control and did something crazy, like hugging the person for no reason or saying something completely inappropriate. I know I’d never intentionally do such a thing. But what if sanity slipped, for one disastrous moment?
My social phobias are rooted in a fear that I will not be able to keep it together, to say the appropriate thing, or present an acceptable persona for a given situation. What if someone asks me a question I can’t answer? The unexpected terrifies me. It’s what I like to call FOBPOTS: Fear Of Being Put On The Spot. FOBPOTS prevents me from answering the phone, the doorbell, or doing anything that could put me in a situation where I might be asked an unexpected question or pressured to do something I don’t want to do.
All of these things feed my anxiety. Anxiety, as we know, can develop into a full-blown panic attack with the right trigger. Fear of having a panic attack in public gives the phobia more power over the phobic. People will notice that I’m acting funny. They will stare and they might even,
heaven forbid
, ask if I’m okay.
What’s wrong with being asked if I’m okay? you’re probably thinking.
Don’t you see?
It would worsen things hundredfold!
When people ask questions, they expect answers. From
me!
The pressure of having to think of an appropriate response on the spot makes my mind go blank. I forget everything – my name, what language I speak, or even how to reply to a simple question like,
“Are you OK?”
My face would start to feel hot. I’d know I was turning all red like some stupid giant tomato, but I’d be powerless to stop it. I’d start sweating, everything would look fuzzy and I’d hear this high-pitched buzzing in my head. I’d feel short of breath, dizzy and nauseous.
I would need to escape, but running away would attract more attention. I’d be trapped – terrified of embarrassing myself by either puking or fainting in front of everyone.
My heart would race and pound, and I’d realize with relief that I was having a heart attack – just a heart attack! Genuine medical distress would be welcome at that point because I’d have a valid excuse for the way I was acting. I’d fantasize that an ambulance would arrive to whisk me away and rescue me from humiliation. I would be relieved of having to answer questions. But of course, the heart attack would never come and neither would the ambulance. It was merely a panic attack.
It makes me angry because the whole scenario is avoidable! If I’m not forced to interact with people to begin with, if some nosy, insensitive asshole doesn’t ask if I’m okay, then I’ll be just fine. Why can’t people mind their own business and leave me alone? What’s so damn important about being social? I feel like a chimpanzee in a zoo sometimes. I just want privacy, free from prying eyes and nosy questions.”
I cleared my throat nervously. “Anyway… that’s what my phobias feel like. Thanks for letting me rant.”
I slumped back in my chair, breathless, pulse racing. I looked up from the paper from which I’d just finished reading, waiting for the laughter; the scoffs; the ridicule. All I heard was silence.
I closed my eyes for a moment, taking slow breaths through my nose to calm the tightness in my chest. I had written my contribution to the group session ahead of time and read it to them. As prepared as I’d thought I’d been, panic still threatened to take over.
I checked my webcam to confirm that the little piece of black tape was still in place over the lens. They hadn’t been able to see me while I spoke, so nobody knew I was sweaty and flushed. I surveyed the familiar room, reassuring myself that I was safe in my own home. Hundreds of miles separated me from the other members of the online therapy group.
After what felt like eternity, the voice of Colin, the group moderator, broke the silence.
“Dana, can you hear me?”
“Yes,” I replied.
“Hang in there, okay?” he said. “You’re going to be fine.”
“Okayyy… I guess so.” I replied. I wasn’t quite sure what kind of psychological advice that was, but maybe he didn’t know what to make of someone like me.
Typical. I shouldn’t even be surprised
, I thought. Nobody understood what it was like to be me – a terrified nutcase.
Nobody
.
I’d waited until the end of the session to speak because I wanted to avoid being interrupted (interrupting was a nasty habit the group had).
“Does anybody have anything else they’d like to share before we wrap up?” Colin had asked. When nobody spoke up, I’d taken it as my cue to jump in. I started reading my written description of life with phobias before I lost my nerve.
* * *
I had come a long way in the short time I’d been part of the therapy group. All I’d done before today was listen, but I could remember a time when even the suggestion of therapy triggered a panic attack. My group met on the Internet and the moderator was only a student, but it was a step, however small, toward recovery. Perhaps one day I would be able to venture beyond the safety of my home and meet some of those people in person.
I hadn’t always been a shut-in. Once, I’d had a life, a job, and even some friends. My phobias had always lurked in the shadows, but for years I’d managed to keep them far enough at bay to remain functional – if ‘functional’ was the right word to describe what I had been.
All of that was before the accident, of course.
That one moment when I happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time was all it took to change my life forever.
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~ 2 ~
May 21 was like any other Thursday morning, except I was on my way to work with the intention of handing in my resignation.
I sensed my job was coming to an end anyway. My performance had been poor and my absences had increased. I’d used all my sick days and was running out of excuses. I decided I’d beat them to the punch and quit to avoid the humiliation of being fired. My desire to work from home and avoid the daily two-hour commute hadn’t gone over well with my co-workers. The other drones thought all employees were obligated to put in their daily eight hours of cubicle time.
Who cares what those idiots think?
It wasn’t like we were friends or anything.
A heavy spring rain spattered the windshield, reducing my visibility to almost nil. My car slogged through deepening pools of water, forcing me to reduce my speed, much to the annoyance of several drivers behind me. I glanced in the rear-view mirror and shook my head in disbelief at the tightly-packed field of tailgaters behind me. There were always some asshats who thought it was mandatory to do whatever speed the signs said, regardless of road conditions.
One driver ran out of patience and pulled out to pass several cars at once, ignoring the solid line. It was a dangerous move because it was impossible to see oncoming traffic, but the jacked-up Chevy pickup roared by in the oncoming lane, kicking up a huge rooster tail of water and drenching the cars he passed. For a few frightening seconds I was blinded until my wipers caught up with the deluge on my windshield.
The driver of the pickup jerked the wheel abruptly to avoid a head-on collision with an eighteen-wheeler. He cut in front of me, missing my front bumper by inches.
“You asshole!” I yelled, easing off on the accelerator. I braced myself for another blinding deluge from the big rig. I held my breath and kept the wheel steady until the rig had passed and I could see again.
Phew! That was scary.
I kept my speed down to let the idiot in the truck get far ahead of me. Those were the kind of drivers you didn’t want to follow too closely.
As if confirming my thought, the pickup hydroplaned on the wet road ahead, fishtailing from side to side across both lanes. After sliding halfway around, the truck’s tires caught traction, bringing it to an abrupt stop. Carried by momentum, it flipped into the path of oncoming traffic. I hit my brakes, but couldn’t slow down in time to avoid a silver SUV that had swerved to miss the pickup and was now directly in my path.
The last few seconds before you crash are the most terrifying. You realize just how little control you have over the giant hunk of metal you’re driving. It’s the worst feeling in the world – feeling out of control. Just before impact, I caught a glimpse of the face of the man behind the wheel. His mouth gaped in a giant O like he was shouting at me. Then everything went black.
~*~