Atephobia- the fear of ruin

I wake up with nostalgia hot on my bones and the memory of your kiss hot on my lips. I get up and swim through the haze. The room trembles with the remainder of the excitement I exuded as I left it all those days ago. Leaving is easy; it is coming back that burns.

The boy behind me on the bus is wearing your cologne. It makes me angry, indignant, like he is intruding on what makes you so intoxicating.  I want to turn around and tell him that he has failed, he can never be you.

Someone has trekked through wet cement, a snake of delirious footprints trails unknowingly across the sidewalk. I wonder if the scars you left on me show. Maybe they are in my pulse, in my eyes. There are minutes and miles between us but I see your name on the inside of my eyelids.

I get caught in the rain. Drops trapped in my eyelashes like city lights in the distance. All the things I once loved, that shone in a fantasy now fade to gray; I feel a light has gone out in me, somewhere unreachable.

I walk on, and on, and on. I will carry on with this intricate distraction. Isn't that all life is? A distraction? Or a high definition dream?  It is played out to sidetrack us from the fact that we are alive.

We are so alive it hurts.

Electrophobia- the fear of electricity

The rain is tapping out a love note on our windowpane but we remain safe in a cotton cocoon. I lay pressed against you, intertwined with you from knees to toes. I am awed at the singing of your skin, the whole continent of you pulsating with living electricity.

My forehead is against your chest and your hand is on my hip. Your calm breathing is gently rocking me to sleep but I am too amazed by your heartbeat to close my eyes.

The steady beating is a melody I want to live to, a symphony that I could lose myself in. I can feel its gentle nudges on my face, the throb of a river of life, the soft fingers of solid existence.

 I am filled with a wholesome wonder at this one magical organ that keeps us both alive.

Asthenophobia - the fear of weakness

My dad was never around much. He spent most of his time building a successful business, but I looked up to him so much that I hung off every word he said. It never occurred to me that words from someone that is meant to guide and love you might be bad advice. It wasn't until later years that I realized that I never did get much from him in the form of guidance or love.

One thing he would repeat continuously in the form of a life lesson: never play unless you know you can win.

So, in my younger years I would never play a game, or do a task unless I knew I could win, which wasn’t very often. I wish I had the wisdom to realize that there are so many more reasons to play life’s game.

What about playing for that look of admiration in the eyes of someone that loves you? What about playing for someone that looks to you to set them an example? What about playing to show yourself you can? What about playing to test how far you dare to push yourself? And what about playing just for the pure, undaunted love of the game? 

Atychiphobia - the fear of failure

Wouldn't it be lovely, I think, to be able to paint a picture in someone’s mind using just your words? How amazing, to take someone’s imagination like a blank canvas and paint it with brilliant hues, your brush merely the formation of letters. To show them places they have never been, fill their senses with unfamiliar scents and summon up a feeling they have never felt before. That I should live on in the printed word long after everyone that ever knew me is gone.

What I mean to say is, when I grow up, I want to be a writer. I want to write words so heavily laden with meaning that thousands of people comb through them with highlighters and markers and pencils, seeking out my train of consciousness.

No one will know that I am hiding my insecurities behind intricately worded metaphors and similes. I want to store my broken emotion behind each full stop like the hidden shelves of a forgotten cupboard.

I want to make hearts race, tears fall and gasps be uttered, just with force of my words. I want to pour myself into each sentence so that you may find me concealed in every space. I want someone to finish reading my work and pause, and think about who they are and what role they play in the torrid lives of others. And maybe after they finish pondering that, perhaps they will see my name and think: yes, she was a writer.

Gerascophobia - the fear of growing old

I stand in the dark corridor and look through the large hospital window into the nursery.  The babies are all asleep in their tiny cots. I count the rows, 11 babies in all. 11 tiny, round heads, eyes closed and crinkled at the edges. For a second I am hit by the magnitude of the moment. Before me lay 11 brand new lives, untouched, unspoilt and brand new, 11 fresh starts.

It’s 2am and I let my imagination run away with me. In this small town there is every chance that these 11 lives will become more and more intertwined in the crosswinds of life.

Baby 2 is going to be a genius, numbers and letters and formulae are going to fall into place without having to think about them. His parents with compare their other children to him, lining up his achievement awards on the mantle.

Baby 7 will grow tall and blond and popular. She will be cheer captain and homecoming queen. Then one day she will wake up only to find that she has become the image of her mother, everything she promised herself she would never be.

Baby 9 and Baby 3 will be high school sweethearts. he will ask her to marry him on a cloudless summer day when the sky is as blue as her eyes. They will fight the odds, distance and fate so that 25 years from now they can look through the very same window at their own little girl.

Baby 5 will find it harder to make friends than the others. He will hover on the outskirts, never invited to parties, sitting alone at lunch with only the whispers to keep him company. At 16 he will swallow two bottles of painkillers. He won't make it to 17.

Baby 11 will start learning to play the guitar at six. During the storm of teenage rebellion he will run away to find his own path. Instead of finding solace in the music he would often get lost in, he will find it by getting lost in the green eyes of a girl with a passion to rival his own.

Maybe. Or maybe not.

All I know is that every one of the tiny bodies before me will feel happy, and sad, they will fall in love, they will disappoint their parents, they will meet people that change them and they will make memories.

They will grow up. We all grow up 

Autophobia - the fear of being alone

You come to me with your heart bruised purple. You slide down the wall to sit on the floor next to me. I make small talk, I try to make you laugh. You're my best friend, my secrets lay like a starry galaxy on your palms. Your words lay like the imprint of rain along my spine. 

You drum your fingers on your knee and I wish I could take up your hand, take up your heart. I ask you why you don't just find a new girl, a better one. You mumble something back, but I know why. It is a girl with hair that never lays flat and a laugh that's a little too loud, a heartless girl. She still rests an icy finger on your cheek.

What a fool, I think, what a fool, to have had you, to lace her fingers into your pulse, to drown in your eyes, to feel your heartbeat on her cheek, and to let you go. How can she live without your hands on her waist? How can she breathe love into another mans ear? How can she kiss with the same lips?

I look at you. You look at me. What has she done? How could she?

What have I done? How could I? 

I can't live without you. Take me back?

Mnemophobia - the fear of memories

I yearn for past times, for days not quite long gone.

I remember golden leaves that crunch underfoot, the sky remained piercing blue, unremarkable benches under undistinguished trees.

I remember steaming coffee cups and the laughter of friends that have since forgotten their loyalty. I remember the stolen kisses from boys who have disappeared into the arms of another.  

Oh, for a time when tomorrow promised to be just as good as yesterday and there's always more time. More time to change your mind, to make up your mind, to learn something you never knew about who you thought you were. 

I've run out of tomorrows, out of time. Somewhere in the morning mist and the smell of freshly cut grass, tomorrow became today, I grew up, those days are gone.

Aquaphobia - the fear of drowing

I teeter on the edge. Below, white capped waves crash like thunder on jagged black rocks. The sky is sleet, the sea is steel. The wind howls and I begin to fall towards the deadly foam below.


Then all at once, your arms are around my waist, you pull me into yourself, hold me against your warm beating heart. I whisper a hundred thank you's, a million I love you's, I tell you I can't swim. You remain silent and constant for a minute, absorbing my tears with the back of your hand. 

Then, as I catch my breath, without warning, you caste me away from yourself, out of your arms, over the edge. 

The fall is long, longer than I would have thought. The wind whistles in my ears, a melody of death. The scream is frozen on my lips, my arms outstretched for yours. There are no tears in my wide eyes as I hit the freezing waves. 

My mind swirls, the water swirls, all with one word: why? I whisper, 'I can't swim,' and my head slips below the water and the air slips from my lungs.

Eosophobia - the fear of daylight

When does something become unfixable? Things break all the time, but do relationships become unfixable? Do people themselves become beyond repair?

Maybe it's when you feel you've given too many chances. Or perhaps when you cry more than you laugh. It could be when you lay, listless and restless at the end of each day. 

I think it's when you stop bringing out the best in each other. When you stop being happy like you were. When you say you're leaving, and they stop asking you to stay.

Relationships break.

When I found you, you were a broken, flightless bird. You were so lost in the still, black waters of life, you had forgotten which way was up. I tried to be your lighthouse, your beacon, shining a still ray of white light into your darkness, showing you which way was up.

The day you reached the shore, I pulled you out, held you with trembling fingers, loved you, made you my own. I gently wiped your tears and held you while you blinked in the sunlight. 

But you were never meant for this outside world. I watched as you struggled to breath, I grasped your hand as you tried to run and finally I cried as I let you once again disappear into that consuming darkness.

People break.

Phronemophobia - the fear of thinking

Clear your mind. 

Is it difficult? Are there thoughts that seep into your subconscious? Do they buzz around like flies in the summer? Do the starbursts behind your eyelids remind you of something long forgotten?

What a terrible thing to have: a mind. What an endless film reel, a scrapbook filled with the faded memories of better days. What torture, to remain awake at night, a haunted house with a single name carved in the wooden door. 

What pain, to remain trapped inside yourself, edges slowly fraying, strings slowing snapping. What a horrible fate, to be doomed to think, to watch days pass by and never be mentally prepared, to be slowly unravelling as you try to pull yourself together. 

What dismay, when you pack your thoughts into carefully marked boxes only to return and find them scattered upon the floor again. What grief, at the end of a day to seek quiet only to find the clashing of cymbals and the banging of drums inside your head or a busy hive of bees building combs all over your mind.

Clear your mind.

Can you? Are you still and serene? Can you empty yourself of thought and emotion? How blessed you are, for it is a horrible, horrible thing, to have: a mind. 

Athazagoraphobia - the fear of forgetting

If you love something, let it go. 

I look down at your fingers tightly wrapped around mine, the grip of someone holding something precious, of the child racing home to show his mother the shiny stone he found on the playground, the curled fingers you wake up to from a dream where you cling to something desperately only to have it dissolve.

I love the way you look me straight in the eyes and say 'I'm in love with you.' Like it’s a deadly serious secret, like you've spent hours thinking about it, like it has changed your life. I love the way you reach for me in your sleep. Like even a dream is too far from me, like you're scared I might wander off as you sleep, like you might forget me if I'm too far away. I love the way you put your hand on the small of my back when I'm afraid. Like you're guiding me, like you want me to know you're but an inch away, like you're my guardian angel.

I love the way you kiss me on the forehead, the way you fall into step with me when I walk, the way you know I'm upset from just looking into my eyes.

If you love something, let it go. And if it returns it was always yours. 

The spaces connecting seconds, the pause between breaths, the instants linking heartbeats, they stretch into infinity without you. I swim through a constant fog of memories, clouding my eyes, slowing my heart. I reach to the other side of the bed only to be rejected be the cold, I mourn the loss of your hand on mine as I drive, I wake up listless from the false hope of days together. My eyes burn. My body pines. My heart aches. The disease of lost love, the ailment of distance, the illness of falling asleep alone, engulfs me.

If you love something, let it go.

Hylophobia - the fear of forests

What makes us want to connect? We reach out desperately for the other, seeking out commonalities, a tiny niche where we can put down roots and grow. Like a creeper plant growing on the sturdy trunk of an ancient rainforest tree, we reach for sunlight, for air, with its support.

The day we met was like a hurricane. You blew in, a cloud of cologne and compliments and swept me up entirely. It’s a slow Sunday afternoon almost three years later and I think I've finally caught up. With your eyes closed and your breathing even, you almost look like someone I used to know.

I've grown over you like a moss, spun you into a web, woven you into a silk, turned you into something that can only ever me mine. You dream on but it is my blood that flows through your veins, you inhale with my lungs, your heartbeat is a mere echo of mine. I am the creeper plant and I have spread my thick, waxy leaves into your furthest branches. You are as much mine as I am yours.

You begin to stir and I lace my fingers back through yours, I send my green tendrils into your mind and will you to sleep. I’m still climbing, three years later. I’m still using your steady ever presence to grow. I’m slowing finding sunlight through your still, mottled shade.

Your light is my shade, the heat I feel is your cool, everything you miss, I will catch. You’re eyes open beside me.

‘I was dreaming,’ you whisper, ‘of...being lost in the rainforest.’

I smile because I've been lost in the rainforest since the day you appeared in my life and took me somewhere I've never been.