Of course, I recognize that a lot of my phobias and worries are irrational, at least on the surface. And, my imagination has a tendency to get away from me at times. Regardless, deep down inside, I know that even my most irrational phobias have very real roots.
For instance, I'm not extremely sensitive to touch and sound just because I'm Autistic. It's also because of what happened to me when I was a newborn. Open heart surgeries are not easy or painless to go through for adults who can take Morphine and other hardcore pain medications. Due to my size and fragileness, and the fact that doctors still debated on whether or not newborns felt pain the same way adults did, I was only allowed tiny amounts of Tylenol as I recovered from my ordeal. I may not consciously or even subconsciously remember what happened to me over twenty years ago, but my body damn sure remembers it. And there are physical marks left behind on my body that, while faded, will forever serve as a reminder of the hell I endured just three days after I was born.
Not to mention the endless shit I went through soon after my open heart surgery. Before I was a year old, I'd gone through open heart surgery, Cystic Fibrosis, a breast milk allergy, Sepsis, multiple Pneumonia infections, and a myriad of other problems I can't recall at the top of my head. Clearly, God was working way overtime to keep me alive. To this day, I suffer from severe survivor's guilt as a result, on top of everything else.
Knowing that alone, it's no wonder I've grown to be resistant to touch. It's no wonder that almost any sort of unexpected touch automatically triggers the "lizard" part of my brain. Certain sounds do the same thing for me. While the high-pitched noises hurt my ears because I just have very sensitive ears. Other noises, such as the whooshing noise of a strong wind in the trees, or the whooshing sound a vehicle engine makes when it first starts, also evoke a sense of dread within me.
I'm not nearly as off-put by those noises as I was when I was little, mostly because I spent years working hard to associate that specific sound with positive things, like dirtbikes and being out-of-doors and far away from hospitals and cities, rather than the sucking and pushing of medical valves and tubes. Even so, those whooshing noises still give me a little rush of adrenaline no matter what, and it's not a good feeling of adrenaline either. It's more of an "oh shit" kind of spike of adrenaline rather than the "oh hell ya" kind. I hope that makes sense.
After all, as a newborn, I was on a ventilator and then on oxygen for most of my first year. And, I frequently needed help getting mucus out of my nose and throat until I was in elementary school, because I was too young to really know or understand how to cough and blow that crap out myself. I still vividly remember having to be held down every time my parents or the doctor had to suck mucus out of me using a little vacuum-type device that they'd shove up my nose and into my throat to get to the nasty stuff. It only stopped when things like nose-washes and "snot bulbs" (a little rubber thing in the shape of a bulb that was much more gentle and less noisy) became available. But, the nose washes were still very unpleasant, contributing to my phobia of water I developed later on in middle school that lasts to this day.
Needless to say, wind and water have been my enemies since day one. While I've successfully conquered the fear of the former well enough to where I can be almost perfectly okay with forced air of any kind (although, I still really hate it when it gets so windy that I have trouble breathing when walking into the wind, because it gets shoved up my nostrils too fast for me to deal with), my fear of water remains. And, for good reason.
Again, on the surface, my fear of water comes off as irrational and nonsensical. I love my hot showers, and I love surfing and snorkeling in the ocean (and making friends with the sea-life along the way). But, I still have trouble getting within smelling distance of a swimming pool or a stale body of freshwater (such as a pond or a lake), and I sure as hell avoid waterfalls at all costs (because, in the past, the freshwater mist provided Pseudomonas and MRSA easy-access to my airways. I got my first Pseudomonas infection after visiting Niagara Falls and going on a boat that went right up to the base of the falls). These days, I know my fear of fresh water is completely unnecessary, as I'm no longer susceptible to most bacteria found in fresh water. But, my "lizard" brain doesn't get that yet.
I'm working on conquering that fear like I conquered my fear of wind and air. But, it takes a lot of time and a lot of effort. It's especially hard because of my age. I'll be twenty-one in May. Adults shouldn't be afraid of silly things like swimming pools. As far as I'm aware, no one else I know is afraid of water quite like I am. Even my own family has poked fun at me for it. They spent all of last summer incessantly trying to get me to dive into the neighborhood pool, and Mom still wants me to go to the gym and use their hot-tubs. At least, they understand my fear of freshwater a little better than they understand my other fears and phobias. But, I think they're quite surprised I didn't take to the pool like a duck dog the second my doctors gave me the green light to do so.
For the record, I've never been afraid of rivers or spring-fed lakes, because such fresh water is neither still or warm enough for things like Pseudomonas or MRSA to live. The bad bacteria only lives in warm, stale water, such as in shallow ponds, swimming pools, and the showers at the gym (which are always warm and damp, and I still hate gym showers because ew). Bad bacteria can't grow easily in salt water either, because the salt acts like a sort of disinfecting agent. It burns away a lot of the bad bacteria. Plus, the ocean is vast and constantly moving. There's no way Pseudomonas and MRSA can live there.
The salt in ocean water only has ever made me feel really, really good, so I was naturally addicted to it. It was my Trikafta before Trikafta came about. I would literally nebulize saline water at least twice a day to coat my lungs in the stuff. My parents joked about getting me a salt brick from the feed store because of how much salt I ate in an attempt to keep my body hydrated. Swimming in the ocean and breathing the ocean wind was satisfying to me beyond words.
I would literally dive into rip-tides with my family donning snorkeling gear, and just spend my entire vacation in waters thirty or forty feet deep. We'd also stand on the decks of the boats and ferries we rode to watch for dolphins, orcas, and whales, all while taking in huge breaths of that lovely salty air. When staying in Canon Beach, Oregon undergoing my first rounds of Phage Therapy, a huge hurricane-like storm battered our ocean-facing condo. Me, being a desperate saltwater junkie, sat in a chair on the porch watching the massive waves crash on the rocks and beach, breathing in that awesome cold, salty air. When it was time for bed, I slept in the living room with the ocean-facing doors and windows wide open so I could sleep in salt. The next morning, instead of eating breakfast, I literally sprinted to the beach outside to revel in the salt even more. I felt like I was literally cured (too bad I wasn't and had to go back to Colorado).
Even now, I still crave that salt, although not nearly as much as I did before Trikafta. But, it's what drew me out of my den when I lived in Gig Harbor during the height of the pandemic. I was out by that salty Sound water, rain or shine, wind or calm, just to get as much of it in my body as possible. The only place I was really weary of was the far end of the harbor itself, where a freshwater river fed into it. At low tide, the salt would recede, and the fresh water from the river would take over, soaking the shore in water that smelled awfully like Pseudomonas, Black Mold, and other horrible shit.
Even so, after doing some research, talking to doctors, and even testing things myself, I eventually figured out (logically) that I could no longer get sick with Pseudomonas. I could test positive, but it would do nothing bad to me. And black mold couldn't survive in the harbor, even at the lowest of tides.
Still, the emotions remained. The fear was deeply ingrained within me. After spending nearly twenty years religiously avoiding things that could land me in the hospital with a lung infection, getting over my fear of fresh water seemed impossible. In fact, it still does. And, it frustrates me to no end. All of my remaining fears and phobias do, because so many of them do nothing but stand in my way and defy all logic and reason.
