All of these stories are from when I was about 5yrs old by the way. I'm turning 28 n less than a month.
============================================================
Birds.
My babysitter had a sulpher crested cockatoo. For those unfamiliar, they're very large white birds with yellow crests. They're especially large when you're a small for your age 5yr old. I had no reason to fear birds and this story comes from my first time getting up close and personal with a bird so I was happy and excited and entirely trusting when my babysitter said that the bird had never hurt anyone and would never hurt me so long as I only gently patted its tail, not pulling feathers or putting my hand over its head or anything else that could be seen as threatening. (She was being honest too, I was the only person that bird ever disliked and it grew to be a very old bird, over 100yrs old I think.)
I had a lot of pride in my ability to pat creatures gently and comfort them. It was a sort of party trick that I could get any agitated dog that I was familiar with to fall asleep on my lap by simply gently, slowly, softly patting its cheek, sometimes for hours at a time. I had no thought of fear as I sat on the grass in my babysitter's back yard as she brought the huge bird over to where I waited patiently. She sat on the grass in front of me, chatting with the bird and we laughed at its silly parroted responses. Next, she gently patted the bird herself, just to show me exactly where on the tail I could touch and stuff.
As she gave me the go ahead, I slowly and carefully reached for the tail and stroked it once. The bird turned around like lightning and I just stared for a moment as it lunged for my hand. It somehow missed and then it sunk in what had just happened and I ran. I fell over because I wasn't actually on my feet before they started to run but then I got up and I ran again, actually getting a few steps in that time. Behind me there was a furious flapping and the babysitter screamed and the bird was on my heals and I ran some more. There was a nearby side door to a storage room in the back of the garage so I stumbled into that little dark room and slammed the door behind me. The next thing I knew, there were loud scratching and whacking noises against the wooden door behind me. That horrible creature was trying to get through a solid thick door to get at me.
The babysitter had been startled too much to do anything in the initial chase and that fear had turned into laughter when she had seen that I was safe behind the door. She just called the bird a few times then came and picked it up and put it back into its cage. I refused to come out of the little dark room until I could no longer hear the bird so its cage had to be moved to the front yard until I was back inside the house.
No one ever found out what had driven the bird into such an aggressive frenzy and it didn't end there either. The bird could not be let out of its cage whenever I was in the yard or house because it would and many times did chase me down. Several times it would dart inside the house if someone left the back door open, it would find me and it would scream and climb furniture to get at me. That creature was evil, but only ever with me. It had no interest in coming inside any other time and it never lunged at another kid.
Later, nesting magpies and willy wag tails extended my new fear to be of all birds and anywhere birds could be or would be.
To this day, I have a very hard time being anywhere near trees, telephone poles/lines, bird faeces, places I know birds are likely to go to seek food, etc. If one flies overhead, I duck and wince, crying out if it gets too close. I'm fine with them if they're a pet in a cage or an image/video of them but any that can chase me have me screaming and running the other way.
============================================================
Spiders.
I did something naughty one evening (and I knew it, I was just being a brat) so my mother put her foot down that I would not get any dessert that night. That didn't sit well with me so I threw a tantrum and stormed into my room to brood over the injustice of the world further.
Eventually, I decided that I'd make my mum regret what she'd done. I'd get my dessert, I'd eat it with someone friendly who would look after me so much better than my mum did, and my mum would miss me and regret ever saying a mean word. (I was 5, I didn't have a clue...)
I packed a suitcase. I think it was actually a make up bag but I didn't know any better, it was a hand me down from an aunt who had stuck a couple of stickers on the thing and said "happy birthday". First thing in the bag was my favourite teddy bear, then an uncovered bowl of icecream (yes, I crept into the kitchen and stole dessert and it made a huge mess all over the bear and bag by the end of the night...), then I closed the bag, announced my departure to my loving babysitter's place and opened the front door.
My mother found the entire idea to be quite ludicrous, especially as I was afraid of the dark and about to go out walking in late dusk and even if I made it to my babysitter's place, she wouldn't have me for the night, let alone forever. She was clearly still peeved at me so she goaded me a little and that boosted my defiant bravado to get me all the way down the driveway to the front gate. She wasn't going to let me go of course so she started to come down to get me at this point.
I looked over my shoulder at her as I reached for the gate in the dark and she was half way to me when I screamed. I'd heart a hiss where my hand was and thought it was a snake. I THINK I might've also felt the fur but I'm not sure if I just imagined that. In the dark, I hadn't seen anything on the fence as I'd approached it so I'd been completely trusting when I reached for it. Turner out there was actually a very large, very frightened, huntsman on the latch. It reared up on its hind legs and hissed at me with all its might. All I saw on closer inspection was this huge hairy spider hissing at me and posing threateningly.
It hadn't hurt me but it scared me horribly. Mum came running at my scream and we both instantly forgot what we were mad at each other about. She tried to convince me that huntsmans weren't poisonous and that it was more afraid of me than I was of it but I'd have none of it. I sobbed unconsolably for the next hour or so until my bed time and from that moment on spiders were pure evil things.
Even daddy long legs, which I used to enjoy watching and thank them for killing annoying bugs. Can't stand being anywhere near them. Get any sort of web on any part of me and I'll have an instant panic attack trying to find spiders all over my body or through my hair.
============================================================
Heights.
I'd been sent to my room to clean it, instead I sat on the windowsill. The house was on a downwards slope towards the back so even though it was only really one story tall, it was actually the height of two in the back where my window was.
Once again, I was lamenting the cruelty of any mother who would force their child to clean their room ("mothers clean things, that's their job isn't it?") when I looked down at the ground from the windowsill. I then looked at the bottom quarter or so of the wall below me. It was bricks with gaps between them. I thought they looked perfect for climbing. I could sneak out my window, play with the dog in the backyard, then climb back up and Mum would be none the wiser! Genius!
I was still convinced it was a brilliant idea until I was about half way out the window. Too late. I fell but managed to catch the windowsill with my hands. With very little physical strength however, I couldn't pull myself back up. Every time I looked down it was like the world skewed away and everything was further than it should have been, including the ground. I couldn't reach anywhere near low enough to put my feet between the bricks either.
In my desperation, I screamed for help, but no one was around except my mother in the front of the house and she couldn't hear me. She thought I was perfectly safe so there was no telling when she'd come check on me either. The neighbours on every side weren't home, no one walked past and the dog's excited barking at this new game I was playing was drowning out most of the noise I could make anyhow.
Eventually, after I'd almost screamed myself hoarse, but had somehow managed to hold on, a guardian angel smiled on me and sent my mother to the bathroom (right next to my bedroom). She heard my last shriek of her name and pulled me back inside just as my fingertips were slipping for the last time (I didn't have the strength to fight anymore). Then she slapped me across the face and cried and hugged me. I think she was more scared than I was.
From that day on, I developed a habit of not opening windows, no matter how stuffy the air got, something that rather bothered Mum. I also can't climb on chairs/ladders/etc, can't change dead light bulbs, can't do anything high. I completely freeze up and can't move unless someone picks me up, then I fight like hell, often accidentally hurting the person trying to help me. It's a kind of annoying phobia...
============================================================
Things closer to my open eyes than glasses.
I was feeling clingy and playful one day when my mum was plucking her eyebrows with tweezers. Jumping on her back and trying to get her attention finally annoyed her enough to say that I was going to make her poke her eye out with the tweezers by accident if I didn't stop. I stopped but that line stayed with me until that night while I slept.
Warning, gore:
In our hallway, there hung a very big photo of a forest. For some reason, in my dream homes, that was always a window. In the dream I had that night, that spot was a window that a burglar snuck in through. Mum and I saw him and he took us outside with a gun. He shot out my mother's eyes and then mine. I watched from outside of my dream body, including lots of blood and gore. I don't even remember seeing gore or anything like that in TV shows before then (I was only about 5 so in bed long before that sort of thing came on). Best I can figure, I took some subconscious inspiration from some lambs brains Mum had recently dissected in her psychology studies, added in the knowledge about the skull and general head anatomy from her text book diagrams, and then added Hollywood/dream style exaggeration. There were bits of brains, skull, flesh, and buckets of gushing blood from each eye socket.
Anyhow, after that very unpleasant nightmare, I could never stand to let anything close to my open eyes without becoming hysterical. As I got a little older, my cousins/aunts would try to convince me to let them put make up on my face. I hated the feel of lipstick and stuff but I could handle it up to the point of eye make up. As they got closer to my eyes, I would start to giggle. When they put eyeshadow on, I would laugh, though I couldn't explain what was so hilarious. when they tried to put mascara on me, I'd completely lose it. I'd be laughing so hard I couldn't breath, then I'd be sobbing, then I'd be laughing again. I couldn't calm down until they moved far away, then it would come back the moment they tried again.
They couldn't understand, though Mum did. It was terror, pure and simple. I didn't even feel fear at the time, just a hopelessness to control my own body. I couldn't stop the laughter or the crying no matter how much I wanted to, which just made me cry more. Somehow, some part of me had learnt that this erratic emotional response scared people off and protected my eyes. That response was never triggered by any other phobia, it was just an eye thing, but yeah, I think they figured out pretty early I was kinda nuts.
They'd show me them putting it on themselves, they'd get me to touch it and put a little of it on them, they'd talk about how pretty it would make me (I never got into that sort of thing, only let them put anything on me as a personal favour to them because they'd beg so and I rarely saw them). Nothing ever worked and I still can't even think of getting contact lenses for the same reason. The giggles started up again the last time I even just picked up a packet containing some contacts on display.
============================================================
Door handles when I'm home alone at night.
This is something that I've only noticed since I got a bit older, since I was never really alone in a house as a kid. It also doesn't have an origin story.
I'm afraid of the dark. Yes, even now, as an adult. That fear gets compounded when I'm home alone and again when there's a door handle between me and whatever might be lurking in the shadows. I'll exhaust myself with fear and crawl into bed with every light in the unit on, still petrified. Even though the lights are on, there's still darkness outside so I'll still be afraid and I'll have to watch the doors to make sure nothing comes in. Once I'm in my room, I can't watch the front door anymore, so I have to close the bedroom door to watch that protect me instead.
The nasty bit to all of this is I stare so hard at the door handle that my eyes start to play tricks on me. I'll think the handle moved ever so slightly when I looked away for a moment or when I blinked. If I don't look away or blink, after a while it looks as though the handle is moving ever so slowly as I watch, like the hour hand of a clock, so slowly but so surely.
I'm almost never home alone at night but it creeps me out every time...
Originally Posted by Hestern_Nestern
Reply With Quote
