Fear, Bravery, Social Anxiety, and that grey area we call Life

Over the years I’ve had a lot of people tell me, “You must be really brave!” or ask me, “But weren’t you scared?” when I mention various things I’ve done over the course of my short life. What have I done to elicit such reactions? Well, the following are the most conspicuous offenders:

• When I was 16, my 15 year old friend Melissa and I joined her 21 year old sister for a month long, unsupervised jaunt around Costa Rica. During this trip I boarded a “bus” that was little more than a covered pick-up crammed full of people – one of whom had a gun strapped to his hip.
• When I was 20, I went to Russia for six weeks. At the time, the US State Department was issuing warnings to American citizens, advising them to avoid Russia due to a ten-year high in anti-American sentiment.
• When I was 21, I went to Russia for seven months, during which time I frequently hitchhiked home alone in the middle of the night after clubbing.
• When I was 22, Melissa and I moved to South Korea to teach English.

• Five months later, we snuck out of the country in the middle of the night.
• When I was 23, Melissa (she’s often my partner in crime, huh?) and I spent two months in Costa Rica, subsidized by our on-the-fly web design business.
• When I was 24, I drove from Florida to California by myself.
• In California, I worked as a Special Agent for twenty-seven months. (No, that is *not* a lie.)
• My government job sent me back to South Korea when I was 25, during which time I visited the DMZ and straddled the 38th parallel in the treaty room at Panmunjom.
• When I was 26, I moved to Russia for a year to teach English.
• When I was 27, I rode a motorcycle across the melting ice of the world’s deepest lake, Lake Baikal (located in Siberia).
• I am currently living in South Korea, Kim Jong Il detonating nukes north of the border not withstanding.

I don’t consider any of the above acts of bravery – they’re just part of my life, how I live. (Okay, some of them – namely the 3am solitary hitchhiking and the motorcycling across Lake Baikal – were definitely less bravery and more lapses in common sense. And that solo drive across the US? That was simply done out of necessity; I couldn’t very well have started a new job from the wrong side of the continent, now could I?)

Looking back over the 28 years of my life, there’s very little that I’ve done that I consider *brave*. To me, bravery implies facing a fear and conquering it. And I don’t mean going bungee jumping because the idea scares you – that’s just stupidity. I mean facing down a fear that you might very well encounter in everyday life. That being said, I doubt that those individuals who expressed awe over my so-called “bravery” would be too impressed by the handful of times I’ve successfully removed spiders from my living space. (I’m sure my mom – who loves spiders, by the way – can vouch for the times I’ve had her do the spider-removal for me, even as an adult.) Yes ladies and gentlemen, spiders give me the willies, and I do my best to avoid them at all times. As I mentioned in my reply to Stephanie’s original reference to arachnophobia, I believe there’s a direct relationship here to my exposure at a young age to Tolkien’s spiders of Mirkwood and their ginormous relative, Shelob. Thank you, Peter Jackson for so vividly bringing that nightmare to life for me. Seriously, a shiver just ran through my entire body.

But other than returning spiders to their native habitat (i.e., anywhere where I am not), I can think of only one thing I have done in 28 years that I view as having been an act of bravery: When I was 25, I asked a guy out. And it even worked out pretty well for a time too. So yeah, in 28 years, during over half of which I have been quite interested in dating, I have asked a sum total of ONE guy out. I don’t think I’d ever been quite so nerve-wrackingly terrified in all my life. And don’t even get me started on making new friends. It’s just not something I do. I have no idea how one goes about successfully meeting people outside of school or work. The thought of going to a bar or club alone is petrifying. (And I did actually try my hand at online dating when I first moved to CA, and let’s just say I’m never doing *that* again!) I haven’t made any new friends since moving to Korea, and I’ve been here nearly six months. I don’t mind; I’m fantastically self-sufficient, and I’ve been having a blast since I’ve been here (and I did already have one friend living in Korea when I arrived, so it’s not like I’m all alone or anything). I would like to have more people in my life, but the thought of trying to go out and round up new friends is, honestly, frightening to me.

our fears define us. or not.

Sorry, I missed my day and don't have a lot of time right now to post either, since I'm at work. But I like this topic, and I'll throw my hat into the ring.

Most of my fears don't affect my daily life, and the ones that do I've learned to live with. Except spiders. Several weekends ago I started crying when my boyfriend wanted me to help him kill the biggest, ugliest, most gut-filled, killer spider in the history of humankind and spiderkind. it took him, a broom, a bucket, and a pile of junk mail to get the job done while I stayed frozen in place near the door, too afraid to go out to help him and too afraid to leave him out there alone. Horrible.

I don't think my fears are very unique, but here are some in no particular order:

--Spiders
--Death
--Eating bugs
--George W. Bush
--People who crawl out of the TV to get me (like in Ringu)
--Sometimes, my TV
--Stray bullets
--A certain type of face: white, male, around 40 years old, prematurely aged from drugs/drink/homelessness, lined and quite hopeless
--Fake sugar
--Male doctors
--Religious zealots from any religion
--Failure
--Powerful governments
--Vampires
--Bombs
--Hopelessness and despair
--Foie Gras
--Mel Gibson's most recent avatar
--Death of people I love
--Home invaders
--Mediocrity
--People who won’t say what they mean
--Terrorists (in the pure sense of the word)

When they torture me in Guantanamo, I hope they use the foie gras.

The Only Thing To Fear...

Inspired by the book I'm currently reading Buried Alive: The Terrifying History of Our Most Primal Fear, I've decided this week's topic is fear/phobias.

Though it's an interesting book, I can't say that I really have a fear of being buried alive. With medical practices and embalming being what they are now, I doubt such an accident could happen. That's not to say that someone wouldn't do it on purpose, but as of right now I can't name anyone who would want to do that to me. However, I suppose you could be embalmed or autopsied alive (for a rather frightening story about that read Autopsy Room 4 in Everything's Eventual by Stephen King).

I started to think about fears and phobias and how powerful they are, along with what some of mine are. Some of the scariest characters in books and movies to me, are the ones that turn into or prey off their victims' fears. Even though the movie was pretty bad, It still scares me a little. I even sometimes have nightmares about Pennywise the clown, but I still watch it, and still read books that terrify me.

Fears and phobias dictate our behavior. For example I have a fear of heights - not necessarily of being up high, but of falling from them. It's so extreme that I can't get near the edge of a dropoff, even if there's a railing. My dad has the same phobia, and we were talking about it the other night. However mine can be extreme, for example: I didn't like being on the walkways at the Virgin Megastore in Orlando. The railings were maybe waist-high and had mostly glass with a metal bar on top, and I was convinced if I accidentally tripped and fell (not far-fetched if you know me) that I would smash through the glass and break my back when I fell on the Cd racks below. Completely irrational. That's not to say that I didn't go up to the second floor, but it always made me nervous.

I also have a fear of spiders. I can't say that I've ever been bitten by one, but they creep me out. When I was in 10th grade Glenn and I were filming a movie, and we had to run through the woods. After the take, we were walking back and I ran into a spiders web. Gross, but after I freaked out and I didn't see a spider on me, I kept walking. So we were standing around while Matt or someone put up the camera, when Jeremy says "Don't move - there's a huge banana spider on your back". So what do I do? Immediately rip off my jacket (luckily I was wearing one) and threw it to the ground. The guys got it off for me, and though I didn't see it (I was told it was as big as my hand), it left a nasty neon green/yellow web behind.

Just a few years ago, I had another incident. I was taking a shower, when I looked up and saw this giant black, hairy spider above the doorway to the bathroom. My first reaction was to jump out of the shower and leave (there were thankfully 2 doors), but I had already started shampooing, so I stayed - never taking my eyes off the spider. I decided that if he moved I was getting out ASAP, breaking the door down if I had to. Thankfully he didn't move, and after I got out my mom called my grandpa over. Being the faithful entomologist he is, he killed it with bug spray and then put it in a solution in a jar so he could look up what it was. Obviously I wasn't hurt in either case, but I could have been bitten (although I don't think either was poisonous), so I don't think the fear completely irrational. I can be near spiders without killing them too - if they're small and not near me. If they're hanging out anywhere near or above someplace I have to walk by - goodbye Boris.

An interesting fear to me is the fear of technology taking over. It's the premise of the Terminator movies, and others like Maximum Overdrive. I found this article on BBC not too long ago. For anyone not willing to read it, or wanting a short synopsis, a study done by the British government said that in the next 20- 50 years, robots could be granted rights equal to humans. It also said that if granted, the government would have to provide social benefits including housing, and even "robo-healthcare" - of course they would have to pay taxes too. Are we living in a scifi novel? Is Isaac Asimov advising the British government? I read this and laugh, but you know there are people out there - the extreme techno-phobes like Ted Kaczynski, who would read that and be terrified (or start their plans to take out all robots).

Going with the theme of the week I thought I'd include a link to The Pop-up Book of Phobias. There's also The Pop-up Book of Nightmares. I bought that one for my friend Java as a wedding present, with the stipulation that she keep it on the bedside table in her guest bedroom. Last time I talked to her, she does, and it creeps her mother out when she stays over.