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Boo! -belith

Our Lady Has Left the Building

17:46 / 29.10.07

It occurs that we've good a fairly good spread of human emotions, but nothing for the discussion of what freaks you the fuck out.

At the moment, for me, it's the last track on Scary Alan Moore's 'The Birth Caul' album. One of a series of performance pieces he did with one of Siouxsie and the Banshees who wasn't Siouxsie, this is a historical regression through someone's life, might be Moore's might not, from bedsitterdom to schoolkid to toddler and them to foetus, in the womb, and the last track is pure holy terror, claustrophobic, intense, Moore's delivery like the inside of HAL's mind as Dave switches him off as you regress from foetus to cell to beyond, back to the start of the universe.

Not the sort of thing, in short, to be listening to on a packed tube train on a Autumnal Monday morning.

What pushes your buttons?

04:57 / 30.10.07

needles.

if i look away, can handle the pain ok, never a drama. but watch them going in..? [shivers] feel giddy just imagining. (had to restrain a patient in ER once in a past job, stupidly watched the metal disappear beneath the skin, felt my own blood seep away and came to a little later with a colleague giving me a tired shake of the head and a smug grin.

yet i'll happily play with spiders.

04:59 / 30.10.07

and now looking back at a post with a silly typo and it being too small to pester a mod about and freaking out that all 'lithers are pointing and laughing in their little virtual way... ;(

07:56 / 30.10.07

You can edit your posts without mods, if you do it in the first five minutes of posting it.

And I have the same thing with needles, but only if the needle is about to prick me, and only if it´s for the purpose of getting blood. When I was really young, I had made the mistake to look, when for the first time ever, the doctor took a blood sample. And I almost fainted (I also had not eaten anything that day). That must have left a strong NO! imprinted in my brain.

08:43 / 30.10.07

I don't have a problem with needles.

But the thought of having my tongue pierced...shudder

Shiny: Well Over Thirty

09:15 / 30.10.07

I'm properly phobic of injections. During the saga of my TB injection I had a friend punch my arm repeatedly, quite hard, in the weeks leading up to the injection to turn it into a bruised, uninjectable wreck beforehand in an attempt to get out of it. That didn't work as my plan had a critical flaw, in that they just used the other arm. It took several members of school staff to physically force me into the room, and I still got plenty of semi-insane shouting in before they finally stuck the thing in me.

Only once in my life have I managed to have a jab without going crazy, and that's when a friend of mine was dying of meningitis when I was student, even then I think I wouldn't have been able to suppress the crazy fear, but I was block rep for the block in our halls that was getting the shots, and it would have just been wrong for me to make a scene, so I got up and went first, and pretended I wasn't scared. It's a small thing really but I'm still kinda proud of that day. It might have been a silly, irrational fear I was denying, but it was still my fear.

09:23 / 30.10.07

Parker pen lids.

And teeth.

Together.

Seriously. It's a weird and extraordinarily specific one, I know; the idea that absently chewing on the end of that metal pen might result in my front teeth splintering, caught in the, I dunno, is it the clip?

Properly freaks me out.

Oh yeh, and spiders, natch but that's a much less bizarre one. I mean; spiders are designed to give the horrors. The pen thing has no rational explanation but it's something I've carried with me since I was a kid.

Similarly, I know someone who genuinely hates mortar, as in the stuff that holds bricks together. Something about her nails and the suggestion of breakage.

Perhaps we should start a support group..

09:45 / 30.10.07

On the auditory side of things I think I have never been more scared of music than when I was just beginning my forays into stonerhood and beginning to experiment with smoking pot at home while listening to music alone in the dark. This it was Mayhem's great De Mysteriis Don Sathanas on good quality headphones in the dark. To my still quite inexperienced brain and ears it was the most scary music I had ever heard. I felt such a mixture of utter cold, darkness, despair and evil spread through me and I had to shut it off after "freezing moon"

Now I can listen to it in a more detached way although it still gives me the chills whenever I listen to it. Preferably saved for long winter walks outside.

Other things that (often) freak me out include: spindly-legged spiders, a dreadful picture of where and who I'll be in twenty years and recurring zombie apocalypse dreams.

I got over my fear of needles by donating blood, and somewhat over my fear of heights by riding rollercoasters and walking to, along and past the Cliffs of Moher.

10:46 / 30.10.07

I'm with you guys on needles.
I did a blood compatibility test for someone I know a few years ago, put on a brave face, even watched while the 4 (4!) vials filled up. I didn't watch it go in or come out, I imagine my eyes were scrunched tight. I have had a pathological fear of needles for as long as I can remember, although I have no idea why, and if one never comes within 500 meters of me again I’ll be a very happy bunny.

Kali, Queen of Kitteh

13:10 / 30.10.07

I'll happily get tattooed, but I won't give blood, such is my weird relationship with needles.

Every time I have blood drawn, either for donation or at a doctor's appointment, I end up passing out and being misplaced.

13:37 / 30.10.07

Shiny, I think you should be proud, that's a kickass story of bravery.

I have a thing about wriggly squirmy things under barefeet.
One of my live in ex's didn't take out the trash while I was out of town for two weeks and when I came home I walked barefoot into the kitchen. The snapping crackling fleshy feeling made me scream at the top of my lungs, leap around and retreat to stand on top of the edge of the tub where I could wash my feet and continue to yell.

I was so rip shit angry I barely restrained myself from physical violence against said ex. Ze thought is was awesome as it was the first time they had ever seen me lose my shit. I was not amused and would have taken great revenge but said person did take excellent care of my elderly cat while I was away.

So yeah maggots, freaky mold, and probably a few other things I have luckily not encountered. I sometimes have to ask for help if a moldy thing needs removal as my gorge rises very easily and nothing makes cleaning up less fun than puking.

13:43 / 30.10.07

Playing the 'Mr. Obvious' card, heights do it for me something rotten. Unprotected heights - without barriers, especially. I've been known to get all wibbly in the larger of department stores. It doesn't manifest as fear so much as absolute nausea: akin, I suppose, to a direct hit in the man bits (apt, as I think freud ahd vertigo pegged as castration anxiety).

Nothing else really triggers me: fine with snakes and spiders and confined spaces.

Our Lady Has Left the Building

13:53 / 30.10.07

I was phobic of lifts for a good ten years or so. Quite happy in confined spaces, loved 'em, couldn't get enough of 'em, but lifts? When I was around 6 or 7 we were shopping in town once and my sister jumped through a closing set of doors and for some reason that imprinted itself on me brain. After that I avoided lifts like the plague, even going off and running up stairs while the rest of my family used them. I don't think I had a situation where I was made to use a lift and realised they weren't bad, I think I literally grew out of it. Still not too keen on the fast ones though.

14:34 / 30.10.07

That's some information I left out actually, I have two tattoos. The second tattoo I actually watch the guy do as it was on my arm.

But then in my mind tattoo needle != Evil go in my arm ahhh ahhhhhhh needle...

15:37 / 30.10.07

Slugs. Their sliminess, their pointlessness, their general ickyness.

This is a childhood fear that had genesis in the big bins of dry dog food we had (we had lots of dogs). My parents would toss tins of wet meat in for use. You'd pick a can of food out and an engorged batch of slugs would be attached to it, having fed for several days on the grain in the buckets. It was the stuff of nightmares when they attached to one's hands. I don't think I've ever receovered.

And if you inadvertantly stood on one and they exploded beneath your feet....EWWW!

15:57 / 30.10.07

I won't drink anything out of a can. Bottles, yes, but if I can't see the inside of the container I'm not going to put anything out of it directly into my mouth. I think the origin of this is a story I heard in grade school about someone finding a dead mouse in their can of Pepsi when they were already done drinking it. Probably an urban legend, but it made quite an impression.

My only other fear is cockroaches, which is rather absurd since they can't bite or sting like every other insect in this part of the world, none of which bother me at all. However, the roaches around here are about two inches long and can fly, which just adds dimensions of terror to their disgusting creepy crawliness.

16:19 / 30.10.07

I heard in grade school about someone finding a dead mouse in their can of Pepsi when they were already done drinking it.

Cigarette butts in a can are enough to turn anyone off of drinking out of one. Not quite a tale of the crypt, however.

Trains freak me out. It is rather personal why that is, but even the sound of them rushing past or the train whistle, especially at night, can make me shiver.