There is a huge elephant in the room.

Yes, she forgot this blog existed (again). Yes, she only remembered within the last two weeks that utilizing that which cost money may be a good idea. So, here she is! And does she have blog post ideas aplenty? Absolutely not! To make things easier on herself, she will continue to divulge just how much of a scaredy cat she was growing up.

Now, where did she last leave off? Oh, right.

When she was ten years old, her parents had the great idea that they would remove her from her suburban world. Construction began on a rather lovely home with four bedrooms (three on the main floor and one in a finished basement), one bathroom (sadly), a living room, a kitchen, a dining room, and a family room in that previously mentioned finished basement. This lovely home sat on a hill overlooking absolutely nothing for the first year and a half that she lived there. Why? Because she no longer lived on her safe, suburban street in her safe, suburban home (possibly inhabited by Grotost and a giant killer duck). No, she now resided in a rural area with buffalo down the road, cows everywhere, and sheep and goats right next door. In rural Pennsylvania, she met what she was scared of during her first few months living in the middle of nowhere.

Yes, she knows that’s a grasshopper….NOW. She, however, had no idea that it was a grasshopper when she and her parents went out to see how the house was coming along mid-build. To make matters more traumatic, the grasshopper in question had tried to hitch a ride back to suburbia and jumped in next to her in the back seat, where she somehow managed to scream, unbuckle herself, and fling herself to the other side of the seat in less than one second. Benny – that’s how she refers to the grasshopper now – will live in infamy in the deep recesses of her mind with that freakin’ duck.

The good news is that once she realized the grasshoppers were harmless, she enjoyed walking through the grass and watching them jump in panic. Every so often, she would also get to see a praying mantis hanging out near her front door or on the back deck. What isn’t such good news is that while she was perfectly fine walking through the woods, empty fields, and such during the day, the country became a different, spookier place at night.

As it turns out, the darkness is scary in any setting, but it gets terrifying when one is in the middle of nowhere. First, there are no street lights that magically come on at dusk. Second, she has seen the Texas Chain-Saw Massacre and Friday the 13th too many times to fall for that! Third, what even are those sounds? She would make a point not to be out after dark. When new people moved in across the street (she is being generous with her description of ‘across the street’), and they had daughters around her age, if she went home after dark, she never walked or sprinted as quickly as she did trying to get home as she did from the ages of ten to seventeen.

Now, while she was still a little worried about the basement at her new home (even though she was well aware that it was far less terrifying and had way less lead paint… probably), a sudden new fear had made itself known to her during this time, which, oddly, was never a problem back in suburban life: the fear of intruders.

She knows how illogical it is to have worried about home invasions in a rural setting, given that suburban and urban settings have a far larger concentration of people. Perhaps it was because she felt like there was safety in numbers and that if anything happened, surely someone would come to her aid or call the cops (she would learn about the bystander effect years later). Out in the middle of nowhere, few people could hear her in moments of distress. If someone were going to hack and slash, she would have to fight back or head for the trees, and a) she would lose in a fight, and b) she also saw The Blair Witch Project and The Evil Dead. Again, she wouldn’t fully understand that the human monster is far scarier than the inhuman one until she became an adult.

So, there you have it.

It is unlikely that there will be a third part, as she can speak about her fears as an adult in various posts. She would like to believe those fears are much more nuanced now that she is older. To clarify, she is no longer afraid of grasshoppers (spiders are another story), thinks ducks are adorable now, and no longer fears the dark so much, but will ensure she always locks all doors. People are scary! Also, her stuff is in her house, and she knows everyone is jealous and jonesing to get their dirty hands on her book collection. Also, possibly to stabby-stabby her in her sleep.

“A man that flies from his fear may find that he has only taken a short cut to meet it,”  — J.R.R. Tolkien

Just breathe.

Siemelle