As for my fear of elevators, I’ll be graduating community college having never stepped foot in the hallway leading to the elevators on campus. When questioned by my peers and professors as to why I always take the stairs, I’ll always lie saying, “It’s leg day every day.”
While it may be physically healthier to hoof it up several flights of stairs, mentally, I’m doing myself a tremendous disservice. Yet, I can’t see myself facing my fear of elevators alone or with strangers. Once again, I’ll only get on an elevator with someone I know and trust; someone I know and trust, who also has much stronger nerves than I do.
Unfortunately, these fears aren’t even my worst or most disruptive fears on the miles-long list. The vast majority of my fears are much more commonly encountered on a day-to-day basis.
For instance, while I don’t remember anything that happened when I was a newborn, I do recall the two times doctors tried to get me to wear supplemental oxygen while I was hospitalized with MRSA lung infections later on. The first time happened when I was six years old, and it took several adults to hold me down long enough for the supplemental oxygen to raise my pulse-ox to a safer level. The second time happened when I was twelve years old, where I absolutely refused to wear those damn oxygen tubes at all.
When the psychologist at the hospital asked me why I was so terrified of wearing the oxygen tubes when my pulse-ox was dangerously low, I admitted that I didn’t like the feeling of air being forced up my nose. “It feels like I’m trying to breathe water,” I vividly remember saying with tears in my eyes, “I can’t take normal breaths and that really scares me, especially since I feel like I can breathe just fine now.”
Ironically, me freaking out over the prospect of wearing oxygen tubes raised my pulse-ox to a safe level. At the same time, that absolute terror made me physically sick, and I can still remember exactly how I felt all these years later.
Unfortunately, that fear of hissing oxygen machines overgeneralized outside of hospitals and into nature. My “lizard brain” fails to differentiate between the sound of wind in the grass, and the hiss of an oxygen tube. When my face is against a strong wind and the air goes up my nostrils, temporarily taking away my ability to breathe, I panic. Logically, I know I shouldn’t panic, but my body takes over anyway.
As someone who loves the outdoors and lives in Colorado of all places, this particular fear is not a healthy one to have. In fact, it’s one of my more embarrassing and hard-to-explain fears. But a very real, and a very disruptive fear nonetheless.
Same goes for bees and wasps. I’ve never been stung by anything, likely because I have a tendency to immediately bolt away from any sort of buzzing noise I hear. Again, my fear of wasps and bees likely originates from my days in the hospital, when I was hooked up to machines that buzzed and was constantly pricked with needles. And again, I logically know that there’s no reason to panic in the presence of a friendly honey bee or even a yellowjacket. Yet, I do anyway, because… well… that’s just how I’m wired, apparently.
However, I do have several up-close pictures of wasps and bees pollinating wildflowers in the spring and summer. If I’m so damn scared of those buzzing little bastards, how did I manage to stay calm enough to get those pictures? Truth is, none of those pictures (except for one, which was of a giant, stingless bumblebee on a musk thistle) were taken intentionally. I was simply focused on taking pictures of the flower itself, when a bee or wasp decided to photobomb me while I was too focused on the flower to notice. But as soon as I became aware of the fact that there was something other than a flower mere inches away from me, I instantly jumped backwards and put at least fifty feet between myself and the flying thing in question.
I wish I was exaggerating.
I could continue going down the list of my nature-related fears, which includes thunderstorms and anything with claws. But, that would take way too damn long. So, if you can name something in nature (besides snakes, as snakes are one of the few things in life that don’t scare me for some weird reason), chances are, I have a pretty significant fear of it. As a result, I don’t really do anything or go anywhere nature-related alone, unless I know the place better than the back of my hand, the weather is perfect, and I’m armed with bear spray. Even then, I’d be lying if I said I never got scared on my solo valley hikes. Honestly, I’m surprised the starlings haven’t repeated “oh shit, what is that?!” back to me yet.
