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.

Agateophobia- the fear of insanity.

It is too silent. A silence so loud it is everything I can do not to scream. I don’t know why I am so afraid to be alone. Maybe because when I’m alone I start to think. That little voice that I keep dormant with noise and chatter suddenly begins to speak.

Maybe it’s because that little voice starts to whisper unwanted truths into my ear. Maybe it tells me that life is passing me by, that I have not become the person I set out to be. Maybe it reminds me of failures I had forgotten. Maybe it asks me why I am still alone after all this time.

Maybe it makes me think of the disappointment in my father’s eyes. Maybe it murmurs of all the chances I was too afraid to take. Maybe it speaks of friends that turned their backs on me, loves that broke my heart, and battles that were lost.

It tells me that there are no second chances for the weak, it tells me that I can never live up to the expectations that are accumulating on my doorstep. It whispers that it is okay to surrender, the ends are not worth the means.

‘Give up,’ it hums, ‘just give up.’

Optophobia- the fear of opening one's eyes

My mother sits me down, her eyes so full of concern. She tells me that life is hard, things are always difficult, it’s an uphill battle. My heart aches as I look at her lined face and swollen eyes. I wonder how things can go so wrong, how someone can love you one day and forget your name the next. I put my cold hand on her warm one. She warns me to be careful, to guard my heart, to build walls, set defences for the heartbreak that will surely come.

For just the smallest of seconds I am afraid, I doubt myself, I distrust the way I feel so powerfully. I suddenly curse the way I love so uninhibitedly, so utterly and without reservation. I fear for the way I give my heart away without thinking twice.

She looks into my eyes and I swear she can see my fear because she smiles and gets up. I see the sadness she carries in every pore of her skin, in every beat of her heart. Before she leaves the room she tells me one last thing, the most important thing she has ever told me:

‘Nothing is ever easy…except in love. When you are in love, everything is easy.’

Melophobia - the fear of music

I wait until the rain has stopped, until the urgent knocking on the roof has subsided and the world around is silent. I press play and stand in the middle of the room, my eyes closed. 

The song begins and in those soft notes, I can almost feel the grass against my skin, I see the stars, tiny pinpoints of light in the darkness. I feel your body next to mine, the rise and fall of your chest, the promises you whispered into my ear, your fingers laced through mine, like a secret in the night.

I imagine me, in a white dress, my arms looped around your neck, your hands on my waist while these familiar words swell around us. I want to think I will look up at you and smile, I’ll whisper to you that when our children pull out our heavy photo album, I will tell them that it is the weight of my happiness that they feel. And when they trace tiny fingers over the edges of the pictures, I will tell them how that was the smile I wore on the happiest day of my life.

That night on the grass, under the stars, life was just starting, everything was light and love. I think of how things have changed, but how much I still want to live and die with you, to this song. I imagine candlelight suppers with my hand linked to yours under the table, midnight swims with our laugher filling the still night air and slow Sunday afternoons under the covers with my head on your chest.

The song ends and I stand for a moment, absorbing the reverberation from my thoughts. I try not to imagine that way your skin felt, the way your lips tasted, or the tears in your beautiful brown eyes when you said goodbye to me.

Chronophobia - the fear of time

I turn the door handle and walk inside again. 

How much more suffering do I have to bare? The excitement I felt when I left still hangs in the air like the rising waves of a mirage, shimmering, whispering.

I counted backwards for months until I felt the wheels of the airplane leave the earth, 0 days, 0 minutes, 0 seconds. 

I did my penance, I paid for my crimes. I shut that door so triumphantly, victorious over time itself. I fooled myself into thinking I would not feel the crushing loneliness again. It slowly bleeds me out, weighs down on me like a million hands, pushing down until I can't raise my head.

A chill passes through me as breathe in the emptiness, 120 days, 5 hours, 23 seconds.

See, leaving is easy, running away is easy, escaping is easy. But coming back to the mess you've left, the hearts you've broken, the echoes of your tears? 

Leaving is easy; it's coming back that kills you.