I'm Afraid of Everything...

Ghosts are real.

I don’t know why I assumed once I was a parent it would somehow change who I was. To a certain extent parts of me have changed; nothing will remind you to be a better person than having a tiny version of yourself following you around, imitating you.

I thought once I was a Mom I wouldn’t be afraid of what used to scare me (everything). Not only was that assumption incorrect, it’s even worse because now I’m afraid of NEW things (see post on vaccination!). 

I don’t understand the inner-workings of the internet but I assume it uses my browsing patterns to suggest things to me. What this means is I frequently receive news link suggestions about parents doing truly horrifying things to their children. Each time I tell myself I won’t click. Spoiler alert – each time I click the link, cry and make Paul hug me until I stop. Each time Paul asks why I am a cyber-masochist and I promise him I won’t read this shit anymore (I always do).

Before I had babies, I was mostly dead inside but remember that scene in The Grinch where his tiny cold heart grows to an insane size? That’s how I feel now that I am a Mom. Except the heart is on the outside of my body and it’s constantly beating at warp speed, with worry that something is going to happen to my boys.

I never remember my parents being afraid of anything. They were brave which meant they could protect me from anything. I want Will and Evan to have the same vision of Paul and me. 

Luckily, Paul is sane however; I am a different story…one night Will and I were cuddling in my bed. He told me he was scared. When I asked why, he said the man in my walk-in closet was scaring him. 

With absolute terror, I turned around and looked into my closet but couldn’t see anything.  I asked him what the man looked like, he said he had red eyes and he was floating on the ceiling. I spent the night clutching onto Paul and checking the video monitor, terrified Will would become possessed and start climbing the walls like Regan in The Exorcist.  

On top of our house being haunted by spirits only the children can see, I am also terrified of small spaces, spiders, snakes, centipedes, and clowns.  Paul does not believe in ghosts and we’ve had many (heated) exchanges where he tried to convince me why this belief is insane. I persist in my opinion that ghosts are real.

Of the many situations that scare me, one of the more popular causes of my melt-downs is children’s toys. I don’t mean the obvious ones, like porcelain dolls and clown figurines; I mean anything that makes noise. The picture above has 2 sources of terror. One night, Paul and I were going upstairs to bed and as I put my foot on the first step of the stairs the stuffed dog (which was across the room) bellowed out “BYE BYE” – I jumped 30 feet in the air. 

Paul laughed at the “hilarious coincidence” – I big-spooned him all night and told him if I found that dog in bed with us in the morning, I was calling a priest.

The chair is another awesome beacon of horror. One night when I was in the basement on my own, it started singing “You see me, now I see you, let’s play a game of peek-a-boo.”  

Now, I recognize these are normal, appropriate songs for a child, however when you are alone and they are playing by themselves, they have an ominous air to them…

My second source of fear is bugs, specifically centipedes. Once one of them skittered across the bar and Paul hit it with a bottle opener, one half stayed behind twitching, the other half KEPT RUNNING. If that’s not something from the depths of hell, I don’t know what is. 

Which brings me to my current situation:

Paul is at the baseball game this evening enjoying some well-deserved down-time with friends.  I am home with the babies.  Please keep in mind, if you haven’t figured it out by now, I am a chicken.  

Being the (un)domestic lady of the house I took it upon myself to take out the trash.  Now, I do not particularly like being home alone, I especially don't like venturing outdoors while the kids sleep.  Even now, as I type this on the back patio I slowly spin in circles to ensure no one comes out of the shadows and stabs me in the back and no one wearing a clown mask within the house greets me through the glass doors.  

You might be asking, why not lean against a wall?  Well, there was an incident with a spider and my hair I won't get into, but the wall is no longer a friend.
 

So, garbage in hand, I ventured into the garage (with baited breath as I switched on the light) and immediately a centipede roughly the size of Will slithered toward me.  With seconds I considered my options:
Step on it in my very-expensive-Christmas-slippers-gift-from-Paul-which-I-vowed-to-never-wear-outside or
use my only weapon?
 

I slammed the garbage bag as hard as I could on the beast.
 

The bag promptly ripped open spilling garbage everywhere and the centipede escaped, sneered at me, and remains at large within the garage.
 

Paul is in for a big surprise when he gets home as I naturally could not clean up and I will not let him rest until he produces a body.  I fear the centipede may get into the house through the drains and he's now probably irate and plotting his revenge so I may resort to bathing with bottled water.
 

The game is in the 7th inning so I will be vigilant until then.  Wish me luck with my survival.