Picture this:
It’s ten p.m. The stars glitter across the sky like lost souls searching for a purpose and the moon watches over them like a gatekeeper. The leaves of trees sway, invisible in the darkness but not to the ear, and as you glance left and right in the darkness a chill spills down your spine. In the distance you hear a muffled sound coming from a speaker of some sort.
Your car is on the street. You grip your bag tighter to your side and take a few steps farther into the blackness, towards the noise. Where’s it coming from? To your left. You spin to face the sound and a couple yards away sits a woman with frizzy hair and a blurred face. She sits hunched over on a rock with her cell phone in her lap and you strain your ears to hear the song:
“In the jungle, the mighty jungle, the lion sleeps tonight” . . .
You quicken the pace to your car, the Disney song haunting the silence in your head. When you get in your car you slow your breathing and shudder at the music suddenly echoing, louder and louder and louder until . . .
It stops.
Your breath stains the air white and your hand seems paralyzed on the door handle; you can’t seem to close it. Perspiration drips cold down the side of your neck and a silver glint catches the corner of your eye. Slowly you turn. Before your jaw can drop she rips the knife through your trachea, singing:
“Hush my darling, don’t fear my darling,
The Lion Sleeps tonight”.
END.
What you just read was based on a true story.
I did in fact walk outside of my apartment, there was in fact some creepy old hunched woman with white hair on a rock listening to a lion king song on her phone and it was ten at night, dark, and silent. I was sure someone was going to murder me.
Fear not, dear readers, I am indeed alive!
I am alive and at work on an over night shift the night before classes start. I plan on getting a little sleep tonight, so I’m getting my chores done.
I have faced a struggle tonight though, as there is a large, black spider above the back door. He is spinning a web and keeps dangling by his one back leg doing acrobatics and falling a good foot from the ceiling.
My problem with spiders is their legs. I hate seeing their legs extended, I hate feeling them on my body, I hate their little fangs, their fucking eyes, their stupid mouths; I hate their sticky webs and the way they suck the juices out of their victims (actually that’s pretty cool). But in general, it’s the legs. The fucking legs. I end up feeling like they’re crawling all over me and I end up seeing them places where they aren’t.
So I did some chores around the house that didn’t involve going out the back door and kept staring at it waiting for it to at least go in the corner so I could go outside and get the mop. It never happened.
Instead, I grabbed the flashlight my co-worker let me borrow for the night and went out the front door, around the back of the house, past the motion-censor light, and to the mop by the backdoor. I went back around the house and came back through the front door and preceded to mop.
It started to get cold, so eventually I had to take a baking tray from the counter, put it over my head, and quickly close the door so if the spider fell it fell on the tray and not me.
Insects make me very anxious. Even the moth that came through the door and was flying around me really stressed me out. Their wings flap much too quickly. Flies fly too quickly, bees are really loud, and spiders have creepy legs. It all just stresses me the fuck out.
But I figured out a way to overcome it. And the wonderful thing about where I work is they completely understand. There are people paranoid about people putting chips in them, there are people stomping around crying “it’s not my fault, it’s not my fault, shut up, let me go, it’s not my fault!” to the voices in their head.There are people in the middle of a manic episode calling or in the house talking a mile a minute or spewing a bunch of ideas and following me around as I do chores. Me being so terrified of spiders on the ceiling that I walk around with a tray on my head isn’t really out of the ordinary.
Some more good news is something told me to go online to look at my finances and my financial aid has kicked in. I don’t have to pay for my classes and I will be getting over two thousand in cash. I almost started crying. That’s such a huge burden lifted.
They’re also offering for people who identify with “mental illness” a class on how to manage transferring into college or to a university. I learned through my job. I am ecstatic to try and get into the class and now that I know my college will be paying, I’m thinking of signing up for it. I could use some support because I’m nowhere near ready to transfer, and it’s coming up quickly.
Tomorrow classes start. I have two English courses: easy. As of now it is 2 a.m and everyone is peaceful here. I think I’ll try and get some sleep.
MentalTruths 