Thursday, July 26, 2012

Blood-Curdling Fear


I was thinking about something the other night, something intriguing and terrifying all at the same time. This is kind of a two parter. One is deepest fears. The things that you, as a person, are absolutely terrified of. I'm not talking about jumping when you see a grass snake slither across the yard or avoiding horror movies because they kinda freak you out. I'm talking bone-deep, lung-constricting, literally shoots terror through your soul kind of fear. The second part was, oddly enough, death. I shall attempt to explain how these two are intertwined. And how they have nothing to do at all with that picture.

One of my deepest fears, and it is a recent one, is that I will die through some act of stupidity on my part, and in the seconds before I die horribly, I will know it is my fault and it could have been avoided. As I'm pitching off a cliff or a building because I wore unwise and unstable shoes, or leaned over too far to look. As I'm about to rear-end a semi and see God up close and personal because I took my eyes off the road for a second to skip a song on my CD. I have loads of these, the probable, the unlikely, the downright unfathomable, all things that end in my immediate demise or fatal injuring, things that could have been prevented.

I don't know why this scares me so much. I really don't. But it does. Just having that one crystal clear moment of "hindsight is a b*tch" before my life ends and I'm standing on the other side, unprepared and in an absolute panic about what just happened.

I have a theory as to why this terrifies me like it does. I have been the lucky winner of two near-death experiences, and a whole host of other experiences that shaved right close to near-death, but those are closer to the accident category and not the near-death one.

When I was 10, I nearly drowned trying to cross a river with my friend. This culminated with me, unconscious, hanging onto a log by no means that logic, reason, or science can explain, floating like a windsock in the water while hypothermia nearly set in. After a terrifying ride in an ambulance and night in the hospital, I was sent home, but it was a near miss. While I was in that water, when I was still conscious and flailing, trying to get my head above water long enough to suck in a breath of air and yell, I had one of those "life flashing before your eyes" kind of things. I pictured my family and, oddly enough, our pet. The whole time, from when my feet first started slipping on the slick rocks to when I finally fell unconscious, all I could think about was, "Why did we do this? Why did we try to cross the river? Why didn't we just go around?"

My second near-death experience isn't near as dramatic, but it easily could have been. When I was 14, I climbed a tree in my grandparent's yard, and 25 or so feet up, put my weight on a dead branch. It broke. I remember that I managed to grab ahold of a branch above me, and this is where I'm not sure what happened. I don't know if I slipped or if I just let go. Maybe part of my brain overrode the other part, and somehow knew that I wouldn't be able to hold on anyway. I honestly don't know.

Anyway, I fell, and escaped the incident with a broken bone in my foot and scratches on my hands and stomach from sliding down the trunk. I barely missed bashing my head open on several large branches on the way down, and although I wore a boot for the next three months for my foot and had one slightly panic-driven trip to the ER, it wasn't that big a deal.

I do remember thinking, on that split-second trip to the ground, "Why did I climb this tree? Why did I climb so high?" What was I thinking?" To find myself on the ground, alive, and certainly shaken up a second later was a relief. But I've had an intensified fear of heights ever since.

Other than these, I've been in several (at least 6) car accidents, been very near a lightning strike, had an emergency c-section with my daughter, and most recently ended up in the hospital with a very badly failed miscarriage that people tell me would have killed me if my sister-in-law hadn't taken me to the ER when she did. You might say I've led a very adventurous life.

I think it is from these experiences that I find myself in a panic when considering all the ways natural human folly and stupidity could lead to my death, and that undetermined amount of time at the end to look back and know exactly where I went wrong and pulled something stupid. It must mean that I am unprepared for death, and I know that in most ways, I am. I am not morally or spiritually ready for death in any way. Death itself does not scare me. The actual separation of spirit from body is not something I fear. It is the pain beforehand, and the judgement afterward that have me scared spitless.

I have other things like this that terrify me. Pain is one of them. I can handle normal pain, although I DO NOT like it. Headaches, hangnails, cramps, that sort of thing. I've even come through two surgeries and the pain both before and after. But I don't do extreme pain. Of the few times in my life that I have experienced this kind of pain, I know for sure that torture isn't for me. They wouldn't even have to get out the thumbscrews before I'd be spilling everything.

The other is the concept of eternity. I'm a Mormon, so eternity is something that is real and definite for me, but it sure scares me. I mean . . . eternity. Time without end. So after the end of the world as we know it and all that goes about, after all the things happen that I've learned about my whole life . . . then what? I'll tell you this, I have some theories about what happens next, and I don't like the one that seems most likely. Terrifying idea, that. But even if, after this life, we will live in a state of eternal bliss . . . what if I get bored? Seriously, ETERNITY. I can't even comprehend that, it's too much, it's too big.

I know that I will be able to keep myself busy for awhile. I want to learn everything. I want to learn every language of this world and be able to speak it fluently. I want to go back to the beginning of the world and watch it all. I want to know all the mysteries, all the stories, all the histories, I want to be able to see it all. I want to see the rise and fall of Rome, the life of Cleopatra, what happened with the dinosaurs, how mankind spread across the globe, what kind of a personality Alexander the Great had, what it would have been like to have lived in Turn of the Century America. What really happened with all the scandals that rocked the world. What happened to Amelia Earhart. What's the deal with aliens? I want to learn everything. And I want to learn how to do everything do. Every instrument. How to fix cars. How to program a computer. The exact process that would go into making a whole world.

But eventually there will be an end to the things that I could learn and learn to do. And I worry that someday, in the far off reaches of eternity, and I will maybe just want to peacefully cease to exist.

This is deep stuff, huh? I know. I get way up in my head sometimes. That's probably why I don't act so serious the rest of the time, because my forays into the deep stuff always send me sprinting away post haste as soon as I've adequately frightened myself. Sometimes I like to contemplate the universe, the sheer size and composition of it, and I'm usually a brain-fried puddle after those little exercises.

Deepest fears. The real ones. Do share with me, dear reader, your deepest fears. I am intrigued. The things that terrify me might seem silly to you, so tell me something about yourself. What leaves you awake at night, alone in your bed, too afraid to close your eyes because your mind is too much for your matter?

The Incredible Ineptness of Me


*Drums fingers on laptop* This is a problem. I am officially deeming myself incapable of knowing how to actually run this blog. Because I just pulled a stupid.

I have, in the whole time writing this blog, and my other one, I have gotten 4 comments. Yes, four. Just four. For two blogs, written over almost two years, I think.

And do you know what I just did? I deleted a comment I just got recently. It popped up in my comments box and I was SO EXCITED! And you know what was even better? It was from someone I don't even know! Two of my comments have been from my sister-in-law, which were awesome, but hardly counted since I know her! I live with her, actually, so she usually yells her comments through the wall or if we're feeling particularly lazy, she texts or IM's me.

But this comment was from a stranger! And it was an awesome comment, about my Superhero post, and I even replied to it! And now I feel like such an idiot because I was stupid and deleted it! I figured that it was some kind of an alert, that I could delete the alert and keep my "comments inbox" looking all pristine and lonely. No. That's not the case. *Slams head against wall*

I need lessons. I need someone to explain things to me! Facebook and Pinterest I was able to figure out just fine, but for some reason I cannot get the hang of this blog site! It's driving me nuts! How am I ever going to get followers to see how awesome and funny I am (oh please, I am practically leaking sarcasm right now, don't look at me like that) if they think I'm deleting their comments on purpose! *Wails*

Anyway . . . I'm still feeling retarded. Betcha couldn't tell. I keep wracking my brain, trying to think of a way to undelete comments, since I've apparently been deleting them after I read and squee about them.

Apologies, my dears. We are talking about a very incompetent and inept person, here. I am the girl that still does not know how to turn the wipers off in her car, so I guess it is to be expected that I managed to foul up a blog. I just expected this to be a little more, I dunno, easy?

*Le sigh* Apparently not. Random stranger that left a comment on my Superhero post about your power being teleportation, I love you! I replied, I really did!

I suck.

Friday, July 20, 2012

The Superhero Era



And that era is now. And I'm not just talking about how superhero movies have been on the rise lately, culminating most recently in The Avengers coming out and followed by Comic Con this week, I'm mostly talking about the glorious rise of the superhero in my life.

I can actually tell you exactly when this all started. It was a few weeks ago, I had told my husband that unless he took me to see Avengers with the gift card we got from my grandparents at Christmas (yeah, it took us that long), I was going to see it with somebody else. He knew I was serious about it, so he agreed and in preparation we started watching whatever superhero movies that had preceded it, specifically Hulk, the Iron Man's, Thor, and Captain America.

It was all over when we watched Iron Man. I had seen it before, once, and I did like it a lot then, but this time . . . somehow the stars aligned, the planets were in the right positions, and the power of the universe united in that moment and I was undone. Besides the MASSIVE crush/obsession I developed for Robert Downey Jr. that is still ongoing, I also fell in love with superhero movies. So far I have watched Captain America twice, Thor at least three times, I am not going to share my count of Iron Man movies (partly because I lost count), the 2008 Hulk with Edward Norton, Green Lantern, Hancock (don't argue, he's a superhero), Daredevil and Elektra I've seen many times, and I have a list waiting that I'm making my way through.

I have Fantastic Four from Netflix on my bed right now, X-Men's in my movies cases, the Batman movies with Christian Bale, the 2003 Hulk with Eric Bana, and I'm considering the Spider Man's with Tobey Maguire. Leaning towards a no on those, since I don't like, well, most of the actors in those movies. And I've heard that the new Spiderman is amazing! I've seen all the others except Spiderman. I'm also debating Cat Woman (yes, the Halle Berry one that was reportedly awful), and I counted League of Extraordinary Gentlemen on my list just 'cause.

I also saw Avengers. And oh. My. GOSH! It was so awesome! It was epic! It was on the scale that Harry Potter and Lord of the Rings and Star Wars were done, it was just . . . I was in awe the whole time. So, so good. I will actually pay full price for that movie when it comes out, and I RARELY do that. I am a discount bin/Amazon/Ebay kind of girl, so when I am willing to pay full price for a movie, you know how serious things are.

Anyway, so you can see how serious I've been about my superhero movies lately, and that is only part of it. Actually, probably about half of it, but still. There is more. I have been reading fanfiction. I have never been a fanfic reader before, I never had a ship (relationship) that I was in favor of, and I never wanted to take on the enormous task of sifting through the loads of crappy fics out there to get to the really golden ones. But I kind of have with this one. At this moment, I have three massively long (over 100 pages each) fanfics saved on my computer because I like them so much! Two are Avengers and the other is Pepperony (Pepper and Tony Stark from Iron Man). This is getting serious. I also spent the better part of the last two days trolling over an Avengers Tumblr, just looking at all the fun pictures and nonsense on there.

Ok, enough about that. I didn't actually intend to come on here and have a whole fountain of every little superhero thing going on in my life. I actually thought of the popular "If you could have a superpower, what power would you chose?" question. And I have had mine decided for years, so I thought I'd make it official.

There are a lot of superpowers to choose from. Invisibility, strength, x-ray vision, all kinds of body transformations and manipulations, just everything! All of them would be awesome to have, I can imagine, but my superpower . . . would be the ability to fly.

Oh, yes. That would be my dream. Which is ironic, since the closest I have ever come to flying was jumping off the swings at the playground, or the rides at Lagoon. Nope, never been on an airplane. But maybe that explains it, my yearning to fly. Imagine how much easier things would be! Getting to work would be a matter of mere moments or minutes! Going to the store to grab that one stupid thing you forgot would be a breeze! Just getting out of the house and going soaring to escape normal life for a minute without having to use up the gas in your car! I would love to be able to fly. Seriously. Most awesome superpower ever!

Although, come to think of it, being able to summon people to me at a whim would be pretty epic, too. My life would be a constant stream of celebrity visitations, I'm telling you. Starting with Robert Downey Jr.

So how about you? Favorite superhero, superpower, or super movie?

Friday, July 13, 2012

Mommyphobia

I've been having that kind of week . . . the kind where you look at your sweet child(ren) and honestly understand why some creatures eat their own young. Oh yes. You moms know what I'm talking about.


First of all let me put this out there, I am SO NOT Mommy of the Year material. To be quite frank, I'm not all that good at being a mom. It's just really difficult for me. Probably because I'm a selfish, self-involved person, especially with my free time, and sharing that time is incredibly difficult for me. This is not something that Supermom deals with, I swear. Supermom always plays with her kids and they always look nice and act polite and never do naughty things, and Supermom herself is so disgustingly good at it that you kind of want to bash her head into a wall just to give her a handicap to put her about level with yourself.

So. Mommyphobia. Let me explain. Mommyphobia is what you have when you find yourself completely and utterly overwhelmed and stifled by the cute little blessings in your life. You love them dearly, you always will, but if you could hire a babysitter for the day, you would do it and run away for a few hours without a backward glance. Just to go somewhere to get that crazed look out of your eye that makes you want to take a baseball bat to every single toy in the house.

It's like being claustrophobic (fear of small spaces), agoraphobic (anxiety in situations where it is perceived to be difficult or embarrassing to escape), and suffocating all at once. You feel panic, sheer and utter panic, and it's a very unstable lid that you're keeping on it all. You want to run away, you want to scream, you want to bury your head under your pillows and cry. All that is happening is your child wants you to play, just take the big giraffe and follow her prompts and play house with the little giraffe, but it feels like you're being water boarded and there's no way out.

As you can imagine, this is a problem. This is a situation that really has no solution. The best you can do is turn on one of those sickeningly happy and perky kids shows that you hate, send your little angel in to watch it, and hide for a bit. Eat a pound of chocolate, chug a 64 oz. Dr. Pepper, turn on soothing music, try to back away slowly from that anxiety attack you've been flirting with. If you have a babysitter, now would be the time. If you have a spouse or family around to help, now would be the time. Preserve your sanity while you can!

Because you know that in fifteen minutes, your little darling will be coming to barge in on your little cocoon of seclusion, waving around another plastic toy to play with, demanding string cheese and chocolate milk, and you are going to have to suppress the urge to scream while you smile and remind them to say please.

You love them, you adore them, you really do. But some days you feel a stunning oneness with the creatures that eat their own young.