Closet Fears

[ling]

On the news the other day, we heard that this guy had crawled up into
his attic, walked across to another person's house and entered through
their attic door. Now, I didn't catch if this was an apartment complex
or a condo/townhouse. But ever since hearing that, we've been
wondering if someone was going to suddenly appear in our bedroom
closet. So we have set a sleeping schedule so that we can keep watch
in the evenings.

Since we're talking about the closet, and this is a short entry, I'm
going to talk about how I was afraid of the closet. I know that lots
of children are afraid of the closet. I mean, they wrote a whole
children's move about it. But how many of you were afraid of E.T. and
thought he lived in your closet?

Yeah, I didn't think so.

I used to sleep with the covers over my head because if he couldn't see
me, he couldn't hurt me. It didn't matter if it was a totally hot
summer, I'd seat under those covers to protect myself!

Somewhere along the way, I lost that particular irrational fear only to
pick up a new one. I have an irrational fear of the bathroom inthe
middle of the night. I don't know what I think is in there or what it
will do if it caught me, but I am in and out of there as soon as I
can. And it doesn't matter if I have the lights on or off because the
moment I leave, something is totally going to come out of there that
will grab me.

I can't explain where I got this irrational fear from. I only assume
that something so traumatic happened that I've just blocked it out. Or
I saw a scary movie that involved a scary bathroom. Hell, just the
commercial for that one movie scared the pee out of me. So I'm not
ruling that out either.

Do you have irrational fears? Do you know where they come from? Do
you think I'm weird?

Comments

[kate-schaefer.livejournal.com]

When I was a very small child, I thought bears lived in my closet. Unfortunately, my closet had a trapdoor in it leading to the unfinished cellar, so there was plenty of room for there to be bears down there. The fact that I never saw any bears in my closet, in the cellar, or indeed anywhere except at the zoo made no difference to my belief in and fear of the bears in the closet.

I no longer have this fear. Of course, I'm 53 and haven't lived in the house with bears in the closet for 48 years, so I think I'm safe.

No, I don't think you're weird.

[lingtm.livejournal.com]

I've never lived in a house with a cellar, although we did look at a house in Davis that had a basement and it creeped me out to no end. So I can understand the fear of unfinished cellar!!