Inktober/Blogtober: Day 5

The Inktober prompt for today is "chicken."  This got me to thinking about what scares me and what doesn't.

You see, some people are frightened of horror movies or ghost stories.  Not me.  I'll cheerfully watch a spooky film in the dark, by myself.  I love the sensation of my heartbeat speeding up as I wait for the inevitable jump scare.  I'm fascinated by people's recollections of seeing what they believe were ghosts (and I have my own stories to tell there, too).  

Then there are folk who are frightened of rollercoasters.  Me?  I love them.  I might not like going upside down or round and round, anymore (my blocked sinuses put a stop to that - it makes me too dizzy, these days), but the anticipation of travelling up a lift-hill, knowing there's a steep drop coming, where my stomach will flip and I'll feel like I'm flying, is one of my favourite feelings.

Some people are scared of spiders and... Well, yeah.  I'm with you on that one.

But the things that turn me into a chicken are often stranger than stereotypical fears.

Yes, I have the standard ones - confessing my feelings to someone and being rejected, losing the people I love or finding myself with a life-threatening health complaint - but I also have some... Well, weird phobias.

So much so, that I make a video about the many strange fears I have, every Halloween on my YouTube channel.

For example, I'm genuinely afraid of dinosaurs suddenly making a comeback on Earth.  I'm fine with the veggie ones - in fact, I'd love to meet one of those - but the mere idea of being chased to my inevitable doom by a velociraptor makes me break out in a cold sweat.

What can I say, watching Jurassic Park as a kid must have traumatised me.

But my ludicrous fears aren't all based on things that won't happen.  Sometimes, I have to face the things I'm weirdly phobic about, such as blood tests.

I have no phobia of needles.

I have no phobia of blood.

And yet the idea of someone using a needle to remove my blood?  Practically brings me out in hives.  Seriously, it's so bad that nurses often struggle to get blood out of me, because I'm so exceptionally tense.  I can't fully explain it, beyond the fact that a part of my brain just seems to be screaming: "NO!  I NEED BLOOD TO LIVE!  YOU CANNOT TAKE IT FROM ME!"

My list of weird phobias is unnecessarily long and, much like me in general, deeply strange.  From having to deal with vomit (that one actually has a name: emetophobia), to accidentally angering Lionel Blair, I openly admit that I probably need to lie down on a couch and talk these unusual fears through with a professional.

So, when it comes to horror films and rollercoasters with enormous drops, I'm certainly no chicken.  

Just please don't take my blood.