Raquel D'Apice (![[info]](http://p-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif){kind=small} theuglyvolvo) wrote,@ 2007-11-14 07:40:00 |
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Let's all be Afraid of This Together
This is a new essay on a topic I've written about before, so I'm putting it behind an LJ cut.
Let's All Be Afraid of This Together
For the record, here are two of my most commonly encountered fears:
Fear #1
I am horribly, unconsolably afraid of being seen as unusual by other people with whom I am trying to fit in. I am afraid of being “weird.”
Fear #2
I am terrified of spiders.
“Oh, I’m terrified of spiders,” my friend offers and I smile because of course she is terrified of spiders. I love being afraid of spiders because everyone is. Having arachnophobia is the equivalent of watching “Dancing with the Stars,” or “Grey’s Anatomy” or “LOST.” You can mention it at the water cooler and almost everyone will know what you’re talking about.
“So I went camping when Adam and I were in South America,” says one woman, “and there was this spider in my tent that was literally this big.” She makes a circle with her fingers that is the size of either a large cupcake or a small pizza and involuntarily shudders. “I cried,” she says, and all of us shriek in unison.
For years I was content to casually mention spiders whenever phobia discussions arose.
“Did I tell you about the time an egg sac hatched in my Volvo while I was at the mall?” (This is a good one and involved a frantic twenty-minute drive home that involved pulling my hands from the steering wheel at each intersection to maniacally scratch my head while screaming. )
It has always been easy to make small talk about normal phobias. For years I happily offered up stories to people about my fears of spiders, heights, cockroaches and commitment—all things that received eager nods of recognition.
Here is another of my fears.
Fear #3
I am deathly afraid of Jewelry and certain varieties of buttons.
Yes. Really.
I first disclosed my jewelry phobia to my mother, who did not believe me and thought I was making it up. It is difficult to be afraid of something that other people are not afraid of because they will (inevitably) not know how to react. They will pick up the thing that scares you and go, “This? Really?” laughing at the absurdity while they chase you around the house with a pair of earrings. I myself did not fully know how to react to it. Outside of my family (who didn’t believe me anyway) I first admitted it to a friend who would become a psych major in college.
“You’re afraid of jewelry?” asked the friend, marveling aristocratically at my oddness.
“Yeah. Most jewelry,” I said. “And some buttons.”
“You’re wearing some buttons right now.”
“I’m not afraid of these.”
“So what sort of buttons are you afraid of?”
“I don’t know,” I told her. “Do you remember in Sleepless in Seattle when Meg Ryan tries on a wedding dress that she accidentally rips and there were buttons all down the back? I was afraid of those.”
My friend nodded politely. She had seen Sleepless in Seattle but had clearly been focusing on things like “plot” and “character.”
“So you’re afraid—like afraid how?” she asked.
“I get the shakes,” I said, “and if I accidentally touch it I act like how you would act if you had bugs crawling on you.”
“So like grossed out?”
“Yeah, like grossed out. Is that really weird?” My friend stared at me for a moment, not speaking.
“Yeah,” she said finally. It’s really weird.”
Which, I admitted, was obvious. If my friend had replied, “No—that’s not weird at all. I have at least seven friends who run away, screaming, during commercials for The Jewelry Exchange,” I would not have believed her. I knew of no one who had even heard of a phobia of this type. I would not have felt completely out of place as a sideshow circus freak, but would not have fit in ideally with them either, given that they drive nails into their eyes for amusement and I merely feel nauseous at the sight of charm bracelets.
I put my phobia away, not to be discussed. Not completely, since I dealt with it every day—while standing in line at a Starbucks I began having heart palpitations after noticing that the woman in front of me had chosen to wear (I think) every gold bracelet she had ever owned. I managed to keep my lunch down and spoke about it to no one. It was only recently that, completely unexpectedly, I received a call from my childhood friend.
“You’ll never believe this in a million billion years,” she said, “but my roommate here in Binghamtom is afraid of Jewelry.”
“Are you sure she’s afraid of it,” I ask. “Or she just doesn’t wear any of it.” I had met and made a very good friend who did not wear any jewelry due to a strong allergy to metal which she had discovered in fifth grade, after taking up the flute.
“No, she’s afraid of it,” she said. “I’m positive. I asked.”
“Can I meet her?” I asked.
“Yeah,” she said. “She really wants to meet you, actually.”
I hung up the phone and stopped everything I had been doing. I felt, I think, what every lonesome superhero has felt when they discover what they have fervently hoped all along— there are others out there like them. I felt this despite the rather obvious fact that, rather than a superpower, I had a debilitating psychological condition that left me unable to look at my friends’ engagement rings without wanting to throw up. (But really, congratulations.)
There were others!
I immediately ran to the computer and assembled a message in a bottle—an incredibly shoddy AOL Hometown webpage with a purple background.
Hi! My name is Raquel and I have a phobia of jewelry. I do not wear it but also do not like touching it or looking at it or thinking about it. If it touches me I wind up washing that spot for a long time to try to get the feel of it off me. If a friend is sleeping over and leaves some on my dresser overnight, I spend a long time Windexing the dresser in the spot where the jewelry was. It began as a fear of buttons—my mother said that one day when I was two and a half I started crying whenever she tried to dress me in buttons and never understood why.
If you have any idea what I’m talking about, contact me at email.address@yahoo.com.
A few months later I found a letter in my inbox.
“Hello,” it said. “My name is Brian. I am a cartoonist from Ohio and I am deathly afraid of Jewelry.
“Hi,” said another letter received, its excitement level matching my own. “I’m an actor in the Baltimore area and HATE JEWELRY!!”
“Thank god!” replied someone named Kim. “I am so happy that I am not alone!”
And shortly after that I was introduced to my roommate’s friend. We approached each other tentatively, like dogs that were deciding whether they will become playful or kill each other, not wanting to discuss why we were actually there. The elephant in the room sat draped in platinum and diamonds from Harry Winston and both of us anxiously turned our heads away to avoid looking at it.
After an awkward breaking of the ice (so—you’re afraid of jewelry too?) we spoke for a while and deduced that yes, we had the exact same phobia. We exchanged horror stories (a terrifying trip to Mardi Gras) and pet peeves (she did not even like to say the word “Jewelry” and called it “the J fear.”)
“Do people always ask you how you’re going to get married someday?” she asked.
“All the time,” I said. “Do they ask you how it started? Do people ask if when you were a baby you were strangled by a necklace?”
“Actually yeah,” she said. “A lot of people ask that.”
I smiled and nodded in recognition And it was not until several years later while updating my “AOL hometown page” that I came across a new website that seemed frighteningly relevant. Unusual Phobias.com.
In addition to 8 people with a phobia of jewelry and 30 with a phobia of buttons, the list included the following:
People with a:
Fear of Styrofoam
Fear of Black Olives
Fear of Green Olives
Fear of Crumpled up Paper
Fear of Spandex (a man who can’t attend his daughter’s dance recitals)
Fear of Rainbows (Yes, they’re terrible, aren’t they?)
Fear of accidentally eating a “freshness packet”
Fear of bank tellers, burn victims, and people standing in the same place for a long time.
There are an unusual amount of people who are afraid of Ketchup and Mustard, of which the following was my favorite:
“My father has a full blown anxiety attack when we use ketchup and the house goes into Hazmat alert if it spills on the floor. He is also afraid of 1000 island dressing. His eyes get wide and real crazy looking and he backs away and tells everyone to freeze.”
“Are these for real?” I asked myself, but the entries don’t seem like outrageous lies. They seem, for the most part, earnest and relieved, usually in three parts.
1.) Here is a description of my phobia.
2.) For my whole life people have never believed me when I’ve told them.
3.) I am amazed and thrilled that there are other people out there with it.
Some people, of course are just trying to get attention. We are ALL scared of cannibal Siamese twins or “Ghost Cows.” I also am nervous about gravity reversing itself, but I manage, somehow, to make it through the day.
A few months ago a friend sent me a You Tube clip of the Maury Povich show in which Maury addresses a woman with a phobia of pickles. The woman is crying and sputtering and Maury, in classic form, chases her down with an enormous platter of pickles, to which she responds by running away screaming into the audience, losing her shoe in the process.
“Can you believe this?” asked my co-worker, who had sent it to me and then immediately come over to my cubicle to re-watch it. “This is hilarious,” she said, gawking. “That’s so messed up.”
“I guess parts of it are,” I admitted, reasoning that if you have a phobia of pickles and you
a.) Volunteer that information on Maury Povich, and
b.) Work as a waitress in a diner
Then yes. That is a little messed up. The words “Mariah says just the smell of pickles can cause her to tremble with fear” appear on the bottom half of the computer screen.
“That’s crazy,” my co-worker says. “That girl is fucking crazy.”
I become silent and stare my co-worker directly in the eye. “She’s not that crazy,” I tell her.
To my co-worker I give a momentary cold shoulder—if you dismiss other people’s fears, I will temporarily dismiss you. To Mariah I give a look of sad compassion. “It is ok,” I mouth to the YouTube video. “I understand and you are not alone.”
This is a new essay on a topic I've written about before, so I'm putting it behind an LJ cut.
Let's All Be Afraid of This Together
For the record, here are two of my most commonly encountered fears:
Fear #1
I am horribly, unconsolably afraid of being seen as unusual by other people with whom I am trying to fit in. I am afraid of being “weird.”
Fear #2
I am terrified of spiders.
“Oh, I’m terrified of spiders,” my friend offers and I smile because of course she is terrified of spiders. I love being afraid of spiders because everyone is. Having arachnophobia is the equivalent of watching “Dancing with the Stars,” or “Grey’s Anatomy” or “LOST.” You can mention it at the water cooler and almost everyone will know what you’re talking about.
“So I went camping when Adam and I were in South America,” says one woman, “and there was this spider in my tent that was literally this big.” She makes a circle with her fingers that is the size of either a large cupcake or a small pizza and involuntarily shudders. “I cried,” she says, and all of us shriek in unison.
For years I was content to casually mention spiders whenever phobia discussions arose.
“Did I tell you about the time an egg sac hatched in my Volvo while I was at the mall?” (This is a good one and involved a frantic twenty-minute drive home that involved pulling my hands from the steering wheel at each intersection to maniacally scratch my head while screaming. )
It has always been easy to make small talk about normal phobias. For years I happily offered up stories to people about my fears of spiders, heights, cockroaches and commitment—all things that received eager nods of recognition.
Here is another of my fears.
Fear #3
I am deathly afraid of Jewelry and certain varieties of buttons.
Yes. Really.
I first disclosed my jewelry phobia to my mother, who did not believe me and thought I was making it up. It is difficult to be afraid of something that other people are not afraid of because they will (inevitably) not know how to react. They will pick up the thing that scares you and go, “This? Really?” laughing at the absurdity while they chase you around the house with a pair of earrings. I myself did not fully know how to react to it. Outside of my family (who didn’t believe me anyway) I first admitted it to a friend who would become a psych major in college.
“You’re afraid of jewelry?” asked the friend, marveling aristocratically at my oddness.
“Yeah. Most jewelry,” I said. “And some buttons.”
“You’re wearing some buttons right now.”
“I’m not afraid of these.”
“So what sort of buttons are you afraid of?”
“I don’t know,” I told her. “Do you remember in Sleepless in Seattle when Meg Ryan tries on a wedding dress that she accidentally rips and there were buttons all down the back? I was afraid of those.”
My friend nodded politely. She had seen Sleepless in Seattle but had clearly been focusing on things like “plot” and “character.”
“So you’re afraid—like afraid how?” she asked.
“I get the shakes,” I said, “and if I accidentally touch it I act like how you would act if you had bugs crawling on you.”
“So like grossed out?”
“Yeah, like grossed out. Is that really weird?” My friend stared at me for a moment, not speaking.
“Yeah,” she said finally. It’s really weird.”
Which, I admitted, was obvious. If my friend had replied, “No—that’s not weird at all. I have at least seven friends who run away, screaming, during commercials for The Jewelry Exchange,” I would not have believed her. I knew of no one who had even heard of a phobia of this type. I would not have felt completely out of place as a sideshow circus freak, but would not have fit in ideally with them either, given that they drive nails into their eyes for amusement and I merely feel nauseous at the sight of charm bracelets.
I put my phobia away, not to be discussed. Not completely, since I dealt with it every day—while standing in line at a Starbucks I began having heart palpitations after noticing that the woman in front of me had chosen to wear (I think) every gold bracelet she had ever owned. I managed to keep my lunch down and spoke about it to no one. It was only recently that, completely unexpectedly, I received a call from my childhood friend.
“You’ll never believe this in a million billion years,” she said, “but my roommate here in Binghamtom is afraid of Jewelry.”
“Are you sure she’s afraid of it,” I ask. “Or she just doesn’t wear any of it.” I had met and made a very good friend who did not wear any jewelry due to a strong allergy to metal which she had discovered in fifth grade, after taking up the flute.
“No, she’s afraid of it,” she said. “I’m positive. I asked.”
“Can I meet her?” I asked.
“Yeah,” she said. “She really wants to meet you, actually.”
I hung up the phone and stopped everything I had been doing. I felt, I think, what every lonesome superhero has felt when they discover what they have fervently hoped all along— there are others out there like them. I felt this despite the rather obvious fact that, rather than a superpower, I had a debilitating psychological condition that left me unable to look at my friends’ engagement rings without wanting to throw up. (But really, congratulations.)
There were others!
I immediately ran to the computer and assembled a message in a bottle—an incredibly shoddy AOL Hometown webpage with a purple background.
Hi! My name is Raquel and I have a phobia of jewelry. I do not wear it but also do not like touching it or looking at it or thinking about it. If it touches me I wind up washing that spot for a long time to try to get the feel of it off me. If a friend is sleeping over and leaves some on my dresser overnight, I spend a long time Windexing the dresser in the spot where the jewelry was. It began as a fear of buttons—my mother said that one day when I was two and a half I started crying whenever she tried to dress me in buttons and never understood why.
If you have any idea what I’m talking about, contact me at email.address@yahoo.com.
A few months later I found a letter in my inbox.
“Hello,” it said. “My name is Brian. I am a cartoonist from Ohio and I am deathly afraid of Jewelry.
“Hi,” said another letter received, its excitement level matching my own. “I’m an actor in the Baltimore area and HATE JEWELRY!!”
“Thank god!” replied someone named Kim. “I am so happy that I am not alone!”
And shortly after that I was introduced to my roommate’s friend. We approached each other tentatively, like dogs that were deciding whether they will become playful or kill each other, not wanting to discuss why we were actually there. The elephant in the room sat draped in platinum and diamonds from Harry Winston and both of us anxiously turned our heads away to avoid looking at it.
After an awkward breaking of the ice (so—you’re afraid of jewelry too?) we spoke for a while and deduced that yes, we had the exact same phobia. We exchanged horror stories (a terrifying trip to Mardi Gras) and pet peeves (she did not even like to say the word “Jewelry” and called it “the J fear.”)
“Do people always ask you how you’re going to get married someday?” she asked.
“All the time,” I said. “Do they ask you how it started? Do people ask if when you were a baby you were strangled by a necklace?”
“Actually yeah,” she said. “A lot of people ask that.”
I smiled and nodded in recognition And it was not until several years later while updating my “AOL hometown page” that I came across a new website that seemed frighteningly relevant. Unusual Phobias.com.
In addition to 8 people with a phobia of jewelry and 30 with a phobia of buttons, the list included the following:
People with a:
Fear of Styrofoam
Fear of Black Olives
Fear of Green Olives
Fear of Crumpled up Paper
Fear of Spandex (a man who can’t attend his daughter’s dance recitals)
Fear of Rainbows (Yes, they’re terrible, aren’t they?)
Fear of accidentally eating a “freshness packet”
Fear of bank tellers, burn victims, and people standing in the same place for a long time.
There are an unusual amount of people who are afraid of Ketchup and Mustard, of which the following was my favorite:
“My father has a full blown anxiety attack when we use ketchup and the house goes into Hazmat alert if it spills on the floor. He is also afraid of 1000 island dressing. His eyes get wide and real crazy looking and he backs away and tells everyone to freeze.”
“Are these for real?” I asked myself, but the entries don’t seem like outrageous lies. They seem, for the most part, earnest and relieved, usually in three parts.
1.) Here is a description of my phobia.
2.) For my whole life people have never believed me when I’ve told them.
3.) I am amazed and thrilled that there are other people out there with it.
Some people, of course are just trying to get attention. We are ALL scared of cannibal Siamese twins or “Ghost Cows.” I also am nervous about gravity reversing itself, but I manage, somehow, to make it through the day.
A few months ago a friend sent me a You Tube clip of the Maury Povich show in which Maury addresses a woman with a phobia of pickles. The woman is crying and sputtering and Maury, in classic form, chases her down with an enormous platter of pickles, to which she responds by running away screaming into the audience, losing her shoe in the process.
“Can you believe this?” asked my co-worker, who had sent it to me and then immediately come over to my cubicle to re-watch it. “This is hilarious,” she said, gawking. “That’s so messed up.”
“I guess parts of it are,” I admitted, reasoning that if you have a phobia of pickles and you
a.) Volunteer that information on Maury Povich, and
b.) Work as a waitress in a diner
Then yes. That is a little messed up. The words “Mariah says just the smell of pickles can cause her to tremble with fear” appear on the bottom half of the computer screen.
“That’s crazy,” my co-worker says. “That girl is fucking crazy.”
I become silent and stare my co-worker directly in the eye. “She’s not that crazy,” I tell her.
To my co-worker I give a momentary cold shoulder—if you dismiss other people’s fears, I will temporarily dismiss you. To Mariah I give a look of sad compassion. “It is ok,” I mouth to the YouTube video. “I understand and you are not alone.”
