Barophobia- the fear of gravity

It’s a funny thing, last night I cried because as I wanted to remember what it was like to be held by the one person I’m supposed to love, all I could remember was kissing you, your fingers laced through mine. It felt like a huge injustice, like I was being cheated of the happy memories I was supposed to have.

I got lost in the night, in the drinks, in the lights and smoke. I let it wash over me, dull all my senses. All I did was run from you because I couldn’t deal with the thought of a life devoid of you. I knew we ended for many reasons, but the lights were too bright and the music was too loud and I couldn’t think of a single one.

And then, this morning I woke up and I felt…okay. Maybe I won’t drink so much because there isn’t so much pain to numb, maybe I won’t run from remembering because it doesn’t hurt so much to remember. Maybe you have to let yourself hurt before you let yourself heal.

I guess I’m okay without you, I can live. I don’t need you to complete me anymore. I’m not a 5^th grade art project, I am not a 1000 piece puzzle missing a piece, I am not yours, I belong to no one but myself.

Or perhaps there is an empty space between hurting and being okay, and I've merely stumbled blindly into it. But for the first time in a long time, my whole body doesn’t ache with I think of you. Maybe I've fallen into the gap, but I think I’ll stay a while.

Cardiophobia- the fear of the heart

Maybe I have some kind of obsession with fixing things; with finding someone that has convinced themselves that they will never love again, and then repairing what others broke.

I hold his heart in my hands and gently begin to fill the cracks, trancing them over with my thumb, like a potter, intently smoothing over wet clay. I trace over the scars the one before me left, and I know he will be okay. He will love like the first time again.

In the back of my mind I remember all the days I tried to make you smile, all the nights I stayed up telling you things I will never trust anyone with again. I like repairing broken things, I always have. I like fixing people, making them feeling like it’s going to be okay. But what I am only staring to realize is, I filled your cracks with parts of myself, the life I poured into you was my own. With every person I fix, I am left more broken. For all I gave you, I am less.

All the same, I continue to fix. Maybe someday I will cease to exist at all, only I will never cease to exist because I exist in every broken heart I touched, and what could be better than that?

Thanatophobia - the fear of dying

I was dying quietly, I was on fire and I stood and burned with my eyes closed and not so much as a tremble of my bottom lip.

But now, now I am dying loudly. I combust in a series of loud explosions, I scream in agony, fireworks burst from my fingertip, I got up in a spray of golden sparks.

Perhaps I have forgotten how to bare my pain silently, gracefully. Or perhaps this is more pain than any one body was meant to bare.

It is a wonder that no one can see the madness in my eyes, it is a wonder that no one has yet drowned in my blood.

I've regressed, all the steps I took forward lay in front of me. It’s unbearable, do you understand? It is unbearable. I hate you for being okay, for living your life, for carrying on without me. I hope you miss me, I hope you wake up sometimes at night and feel as if a cold knife has been driven through your heart, I hope you see the sunset and your hands burn at the memory at holding mine. It is only just that you feel like that, because I do. I do.

I itch to call you, to tell you that everything that mattered to me before is gone, to ask you to come back because you were the centre of my universe and without you I float aimless, a lost planet.

I’m dying loudly, my breath is the creaking of a rusted door, by heartbeat is the clash of cymbals. I've forgotten how to be soundless, I've forgotten how to be poised. I spill over with black smoke and I cry shamelessly as the flames engulf me.

Nostophobia- the fear of returning home

The lights rush by way too fast, everything is a blur of skyscrapers and night air and adrenaline. The skyline is reflected in the river and I feel a part of that reflection, I almost have substance, but I do not fully exist.

The air whips my hair back and I look upwards, and although we are moving so fast, the sky looks as if it is not moving at all. We are travelling but we are still.

I close my eyes and stretch my arms skywards, I laugh but the sound is lost in the air roaring around me. I am both nothing and everything. We fly by palm trees, couples kissing on benches, more water, and still more light. I will always remember, but I have already forgotten.

The city buildings look unimaginably high, the streets look unbelievably alive and I am one speck, one tread in the fabric. The air is whistling tunes in my ear and I am both here and everywhere.

I fill my lungs with air and I swear there is nothing sweeter in the world than the air here. I allow myself to get dazzled by the lights until it is a haze of gold and blue and red, the music is way too loud and I mouth the words by heart. This may be the end, but it only the beginning.

Nephophobia- the fear of clouds

Building a cloud

Clouds have come to be associated with darkness, the foretelling of wind and rain. Writers use the pathetic fallacy to foreshadow fear and pessimism with the coming of rain clouds.

When I think of clouds, however, I think of the day I came home, on a plane, looking down on a blanket of fluffy clouds, turned pink by the setting sun. The sky was violet and I felt I could almost step out onto them and walk, feeling only cotton between by toes.

Berndnaut Smilde created his ‘Nimbus’ exhibit not based on the eerie chill clouds bring in the late evening, but on the simple whimsy of a solitary cloud in a faultless blue sky, a work of art so breathtakingly beautiful.

Today I told him that I would like a cloud, a cloud in my apartment. Maybe because I like the imperfect outline it brings, a jagged softness, or maybe I want to have a moment of happiness, the wisps of another time, floating in my sitting room.

I want my own Nimbus.

‘I will build you a cloud,’ he says, ‘and I will make it pink because I know pink makes you happy. But I will make it in a bottle, so that where ever you go, you can take the cloud.’

I think of suitcases spilling over with clothes, and on top of the mess, my cloud in a bottle. I think of setting it on my bedside table where ever I go. When I am sad I will hold it in my hands and remember a day when everything was right in the world and I was a lot happier than I am tonight.

Isolophobia- the fear of solitude

Repairing what is damaged is considered noble. What no one ever tells you is that when you take someone broken and fix them, spill your own life into them, you make them whole again. What is terrifying about this is, that by loving them so much you become dependent on them. And in that same act of loving them, you make them well enough to walk away from you.

Potamophobia- The fear of rivers

Inside I am all a blur. They say the best writing is done on a broken heart, but my heart is too broken for my mind to fathom thoughts.

I want to tell you that I love you, that I will paint you a hundred million sunsets. I will pour over ten thousand pages of poetry and highlight every word that reminds me of the colour of your eyes in the sunlight. Let me be relentless in my love for you, let me wear you away like an unyielding river.  Your name is spelt out in every heartbreaking guitar chord I hear.

I feel broken again and again and again.

Something burns white hot in my core, it’s scorching me from the inside out. You have hollowed out my eyes. I want to take your hand and put it over my heart and ask you if you feel me dying. Do you feel me dying? From across a sea, do you feel my breathing slowing? Do you feel me giving up?

You were supposed to love me. And I was supposed to love you. What a letdown love is.

Rivers are flowing from my wrists, from my eyes, from my heart, a billion rivers. How much can a heart endure, I wonder, before the weight of remembering crushes it? Maybe you will forget how my fingers felt when they were laced through yours, maybe you will forget the taste of my lips.

Close your eyes. Do you feel me dying?

Decidophobia- the fear of making decisions

Part 1

The room is almost filled by the long table that stretches from end to end. Atop is a white linen tablecloth embroidered with silver snowflakes that glitter when the light catches them. The table is laden with shining white plates set for each person and glimmering crystal glasses in every shape, from wine to water. Silver cutlery is neatly lined up, salad fork, dinner fork, cake fork, dessert spoon, dinner knife, teaspoon, soup spoon, all proudly displaying the initials of the hostess in a curling Edwardian script. The centre of the table holds what looks like a hundred crystal candle stands with tall silver candles elegantly rising skyward like sentinels. Between them, small glass cubes sprout dozens of creamy white roses, a gem glowing in the centre of each flower.

Behind the table is a brick wall featuring huge windows that rise arching, like those of an ancient cathedral, from white marble floor to ceiling. There are no drapes, the only background is the snow falling outside. The room should be cold, but is only pleasantly cool.

Inside too it appears that snow is falling. The ceiling above drips with strings of clear gems, pearls and tiny paper globes in white and silver. Four chandeliers in different sizes hang over the table like shimmering crystal orbs, a million shining flower petals. Light bulbs hang suspended in delicate spherical cages like shining, white birds. It is a beautiful chaos of light.

Each seat is covered in a think white fur, soft to the touch and the smell of roses and lavender is only faint in the air. The table glitters, the snow outside glitters, the chandeliers glitter. The  white and silver room fills with the sound of strings and clinking of glasses as the night begins.

Part 2

The walls reflect the deep redness of oak in the gentle golden lighting. The long table is covered in a rich gold silk that matches the thick carpeting underfoot. The table is a mass of large red roses and purple carnations in both tall and short glass vases with round bases that look as though they have been dipped in spun sugar. The roses, their delicate petals fully open, spill over the edge of the vases.  Tea candles cast a warm light from tiny spun sugar holders. These cover the whole centre of the table, a riot of crimson, eggplant and burgundy and the diffusion of candle light.

Heavy bone china plates with a pattern of tiny roses around the edges and smooth, weighty cutlery are set at each place with rose petals scattered along the length of the table. From the high ceiling ornate filigree chandeliers hold frosted bulbs that give off a gentle golden glow. The ceiling is covered in elaborate inlays and cornicing, cherubs flutter between olive wreaths and fluffy clouds.  The rich scent of cinnamon fills the warm air.

The chairs are high backed, heavy, dark wood with red silken seats and backs. Everything is warm and soft as candles flicker, casting shadows on the petal strewn tablecloth. An indigo place card sits at each place with each name handwritten in gold calligraphy. The sound of laughter fills the room as people find their places. 

Clinophobia- the fear of going to bed

My love is burning itself to ashes. I am consumed. I awake begging to forget the colour of your eyes. I detest the memory of my hand in yours. Your lips have poisoned me.

You pull me like the moon pulls the tides and I am hopeless, helpless, haphazardly clinging to the shore.

It’s all I can muster to whisper, stop, in my sleep.

I tremble like a leaf in your hurricane. I will you to forget my face.

I lay like a child on my side. A mountain range is rising from my spine. You are running down my face like hot blood.

You kissed my lips as you drenched me in gasoline. Without looking back, you strike a match.

Catoptrophobia- the fear of mirrors

‘You’re just like me,’ he says. I’ve lost track of how many times I’ve heard this. I don’t know what it is in me that makes a boy look at me and see his own reflection, not only in my eyes but in my mannerisms, in my thought process and my personality.

But then maybe that is all any of us are, a mere reflection of each other, the looking glass of the world. Maybe we are born blank canvases, clean slates, and then we go into the world and we become a cross-stitch of other people. Like a quilt, maybe we become an accumulation of the traits we admire in others. Whether it’s the way your first love crinkled her nose when she laughed, the phrase your best friend always uses, or the love of peonies of your favourite television character, we fit them together, weave them together with the strings of our own consciousness and wrap ourselves in it.

So perhaps I am a mirror lake, an echo of a million different voices. Perhaps we all are. But then what happens when you take away all the traits we’ve picked up, like children collecting seashells on the white beach? Perhaps once you take away all the good, all that is left, all that is truly ours, is the bad. The only thing that we don’t try to pick up along the way is a darkness to add to the one inside of us.

So I wait for a boy to tell me, not that I am a reflection of the best parts of himself, but that when I look in the mirror, the scars reflected back match his. I wait for him to tell me that he lays awake at night wishing he could dispel the same demons that I wrestle with. I wait for a boy that looks into my eyes and does not see the mirrored surface of the lake, but the still, icy depths.