Who Has Time to Be Scared of Normal Things? Not Me.

I have an irrational fear... And let me tell you what, irrational fears are so hard to live with.

I mean, mine is pretty bad. Sometimes, it keeps me up at night. Other times I have nightmares that cause me to wake up screaming and literally leaping out of my bed, trying to get away.

But hey, Acceptance is the first step to recovery, right?

I mean seriously, I didn't always know that my fear was irrational. I actually had no idea until a couple years ago. I thought it was a normal fear that most people had.
Okay, so what is my fear? Let me tell you.

Cockroaches. The word itself is enough to make me shudder. I can't even look at a picture of one without freaking out... It's ridiculous, right? I mean whats it going to do to me? Nothing.

The sad part is I know that they can't hurt me, but I am still deathly afraid of them. It's even to the point where I cant step anywhere I've seen them crawl, or touch anything I've seen them touch. Bad right?

For example, earlier tonight I was at the bus stop waiting to go home, and I see one, a huge one, and it flies! No one else at the bus stop even noticed it, and here I am trying not to have a panic attack just from the very sight of it. And it was a crazy one too. It was running around everywhere, and then flying every now and then. It flew back and forth a couple times in front of the bus bench. This is when I had to get up and move as far away as I could, without looking strange, and all the while, keeping my eyes on it to make sure it didn't come near me. There was no way I was going to stop watching it for a second. Then I got paranoid and thought there might be more everywhere around me and I had to start looking around to make sure they weren't. I felt like my skin was crawling.

Finally, after what felt like an eternity, the bus came. I moved up to the bus, still being mindful of where the bug was to make sure it didn't try to sneak on the bus with us.

And then it lands on a boy's leg who was a few feet behind me. I freaked out. And all he did was shake it off and say, "aw hell naw! That's a big ass roach." For some reason, this made me laugh so hard. If that were me that the roach landed on, I would have gone running and screaming and probably crying too. But all this person did was shake it off, and say 'aw hell naw.

That's how I know my fear is irrational. End of story.

But for some reason, I just can't shake it.