Fear and the Color Blue

As far back as I can remember, I can recall feeling a very strong aversion to brightly colored foods.  During my childhood this included many different types of candy, vegetables, and fruits.  Apples and oranges and bananas were fine, because the fruit inside is not brightly colored, just the exterior.  I was particularly averse to beets and yams in the vegetable department, and blueberries and grapes in the fruit department.  The candy store had great appeal to me, but there was a limited selection of candies I would enjoy. Primarily, what I wanted to avoid was the transfer of colors onto my tongue and teeth.  While all bright colors were a potential threat, I was particularly averse to the color blue.  The thought of it staining my lips still sends a familiar shiver up my spine.  I am now able to control this aversion to a certain degree.  If I am certain the brightly colored food will not impart its hue, then I can eat the food without feeling ill or panicky.  This does not apply to blue.  Should blue food of any kind be anywhere near my mandibles, I get a knotted feeling in my stomach, wrinkle my nose in disgust, and lose my appetite.

I think I can trace my particular aversion to blue to two separate occasions in elementary school.  The first involved a trek to the candy store with my closest childhood friend.  He bought some jawbreakers, the kind that come in a package of six, and gave me a blue one.  I didn't want to eat it, but he said it wouldn't make my mouth blue, so I did.  Then I looked in a mirror and my heart stopped for a few seconds as I realized the deep ocean hue that my maw had been imbued with.  That was the last time I ever ate a dark blue candy.  The other occasion happened a little bit later, though not too long after - maybe a year or two.  I had some smarties, and I was eating them during lunch break on the deck in front of our school doors.  I was consciously aware of the blue smarties, but fairly certain they weren't going to stain my mouth if I chewed quickly.  The bell rang and kids started streaming through the doors in front of me.  I heard a girl say, "Eww your mouth is BLUE!".  I don't know if she was talking to me, but it was enough to terrify me.  I vigorously wiped my lips with my shirt and have never again eaten even a blue smartie.  Those go in the garbage.  Where they belong.

When I was much younger, my Aunt and Uncle came to visit our family in Winnipeg.  I recall nothing of this visit except for a brief episode that continues to haunt me.  My Uncle took an orange marker and put a dot on my nose.  No big deal right?  He soon discovered that it was, in fact, a startlingly big deal.  As soon as the ink touched me I was overwhelmed with a feeling I cannot well describe, all I can say is that I did NOT want that ink on my face.  It was a combination of violation, embarrassment, anger, hurt, and just a whole lot of bad stuff that I was only able to express in one way.  I screamed.  Not like a terrified girly shriek, more like a bellowing, heart-wrenching wail.  My dad came rushing to the scene to see what the problem was, and I was a blubbery mess of tears and toddler snot.  My Uncle was stunned.  I was acting as though he had done something profoundly disturbing, and all he had done was put a dot on my nose.  I feel bad recalling this memory - he must have felt terrible.  Needless to say, it never happened again.

I was a very sensitive child, as you can see rather plainly.  When I was nine years old, something happened to me that led to a time in my life that has been instrumental in the development of my feelings of inferiority.  It began at a friends birthday party.  For his birthday party, he was allowed to have a sleepover with his friends from school.  He wanted to rent some movies to watch, and I went with him and his dad to the video store.  Cue the foreboding music.  While he and his dad went off to find the movie he wanted, I sauntered off on my own, to peruse the videos.  This was the first time I had ever been on my own in a movie store and I stumbled upon the horror section, looking about to make sure I wouldn't be caught in what I perceived to be a "naughty" area.  In front of me I saw movie boxes with fascinating artwork and intriguing titles.  I had heard of Freddy Krueger movies, and noticed the case on the shelf.  I was consumed with curiosity - why was I told they were so bad?  What could possibly make these movies so terrible?  I picked up the case, and flipped it over to see the small pictures that gave a glimpse into the world inside the oversized cassette tape.

I wasn't prepared for what I saw, and the image seared into my memory, continuing to haunt me for years.  Instead of a few little pictures, it was one big picture that took up half of the back of the box.  I saw a stark white bedroom, with a bed in it.  On the bed was a young woman looking down with a horrified expression as her feet disappeared inside the giant maw of a demonically grotesque, burn scarred head resting at the foot of her bed.  I was startled at first, and filled with the feeling that I shouldn't have been looking at it.  Shame and regret gripped me, and I quickly put down the case and rushed over to where my friend and his father were.  I don't know which part of the image disturbed me more - the disgusting giant head eating the woman, her terrified expression, or the knowledge that the woman was being eaten alive.  In any order, for my naive mind it was the trifecta that won me months of insomnia and night terrors.

I was fine that night.  I don't know if it was because there were enough distractions to keep me from thinking about it, or if shock had just left me stunned for a time, but I was able to finish out the night and have a good time watching the movie and playing video games.   The next night I was not okay.  It began with my reading a few chapters of a Goosebumps book before I went to bed.  This was a terrible idea of course, but I loved those books.  My parents were not fond of them, but as long as the subject matter wasn't demonic or having any religious theme (they would screen them before I read them), I was allowed to read them.  This one was about a camp in which the children were disappearing.  It turned out they were being used as slaves by a giant Jabba the Hutt looking thing that occasionally ate them for a snack - this was the part that I got to when I decided to shut out the light and go to sleep.  The feeling of dread slowly crept up on me, slowly enveloping my whole body.  I started to remember the image from the back of the movie box.  I started to feel a deep and profound discomfort at the thought of the woman actually being in that situation, and my mind began to consider what she might have been feeling, or rather, what I would be feeling in her position.

Once those considerations took hold, there was no turning back.  There began a vicious whirlwind of fear as thoughts of pain, suffering and torment busily etched new horrors into my brain.  I was paralyzed.  I remember the blue sleeping bag that served as my blanket becoming heavier and heavier as the thoughts became more vivid.  I began to convince myself that the heaviness was the burn scarred head from the movie, resting at my feet ready to consume me and punish me for having looked at it.  I was the innocent child who saw too much, had learned something I shouldn't have, and was now going to die a terrifying death.  The night had always been a scary time for me, and many times I had knocked on my parents door and ended up sleeping on a mat next to their bed, but this was a different sort of scared.  This was fright that was somehow coming from inside of me, and I couldn't get away from it.  I was feeling too paralyzed to even call out, but somehow I managed to find my voice, and I screamed.  This time though it wasn't the bellowing wail,  it was the terrified girly shriek.

My dad came rushing downstairs in a panic (wearing only underwear, just so you have comically accurate image), thinking again that something terrible had happened.  I think I began to babble about the head at the foot of my bed, and was just generally trying to describe to him what I was afraid of.  He took me upstairs, and that night I slept in my parents room.  The next day was back to normal, and no mention was made of the previous night's terror.  But when it came time to go to bed, the severity of the fear began to be apparent.  I wouldn't go downstairs.  I wouldn't even put my foot on the first step.  My parents said they would come with me, and tried to convince me that there was nothing to be afraid of, but all to no avail.  I was terrified at the thought of being in the basement.  So that night I again slept in my parent's room.  And then again the next night, and again the night after that.  After a while my mat beside their bed was moved into an area in their room that my dad used as an office.  It was the same room, just with a desk between me and my parent's bed, and it was a struggle to get me to cooperate with even this much separation.  I don't recall exactly how long this went on for, but it wasn't a matter of weeks, it went on for a few months.

The effects of this spilled over into my school life.  Occasionally boys in my class would have sleepovers.  I very much liked these sleepovers because I was generally able to play video games I couldn't otherwise play, and watch movies I wouldn't otherwise be allowed to watch.  Invariably though, once my classmates had all fallen asleep, the fear would get to me, and I would knock on the host parents door, asking them to call my parents.  One time I was staying overnight at a friends house who lived an hour away from Brandon, and sure enough when bedtime came and I was alone, the thoughts began and the devious streams of fear were unleashed, pouring through mind like angry rivers tearing at muddy banks; ever widening, always rushing, and impossible to dam.  I began to cry, not wanting to be heard, and yet desperately hoping that I would be so that someone would come to my side.  They did hear, and I was given the phone to call my parents, and then given a teddy bear and reassured that everyone gets homesick and I shouldn't feel bad.  This did help me to not feel so embarrassed and small, but they didn't understand that I wasn't homesick.  I was afraid of my thoughts, and the terrifying visions they would force upon me.  I had no way of controlling it.

After a time I discovered I was no longer being invited to sleepovers, and I asked why.  I was told by my friends that their parents had told them not to invite me, because they did not want to have to get up in the middle of the night to call my parents.  I understood, and did not want to be a burden - but I felt terribly hurt by it, and very small.  I felt inferior because I had a problem doing what no one else seemed to have a problem with.  I thought my friends parents considered me weak and didn't want to deal with my inadequacy.  I still had sleepovers with my closest friends, but I no longer participated in the group activities with most of the class.  I felt too different, like there was not room for me and my foibles. 

I eventually did move back into my basement room, though it was a lengthy and taxing process for both myself and my parents.  At first my father had sleep on the floor next to my bed.  After I got used to that, he would only stay until I fell asleep.  He gradually decreased his time there, challenging and encouraging me to be on my own, until I was able to function normally.  For a long time this period in my life was something I looked at with shame, and never shared with anyone.  I hid it, because I thought it was something that betrayed my weakness.  As far as I knew no one else was sleeping in their parents bedroom in middle school, and definitely not because  they looked at the back of a scary movie.  My classmates would talk about watching things that I would shiver at the thought of.  How can I be so much weaker than them?  Why am I the only one who can't handle it? 

Now I look back and cherish the things that made me different.  For whatever reason I was, and still am an incredibly sensitive person.  This means I deal with many things differently than a lot of other people, and I have grown to be okay with it.  I can watch a scary movie now because I can distinguish the difference between reality and fantasy - something I was unable to do at a younger age.  My religious indoctrination did not help at all, as many of the terrifying thoughts that I had were in my mind a real possibility, not an imagined fantasy.  I was constantly being taught about "real" demonic warfare and  was threatened with the very real reality of eternal torment and suffering.  I still do not watch movies or read books in which I am faced with innocent people suffering violence and pain.  I experience severe discomfort at thoughts of others experiencing duress and harm, and avoid those stimuli.  But the burn-scarred head is no longer a manifestation of the real threat of evil that I was raised to be vigilant of.

A problem I now have, is that I have trained myself over the years to halt the creative thought flow that was at work to cause my paralyzing fear.  I have trouble accessing it now, because I am so averse to the possibility of being so helpless.  I think I've managed to cut off the part of me that creates, and now I'm trying to find it again.  It's a process, but hopefully this blog is a good start!

Thanks for following along, I'll be resuming my confession soon, but felt compelled to get this part out.  I'll probably be punctuating the confession posts with more of these anecdotes as I carry on, I have a good many experiences I want to put into word, but that don't fit within the time line of the confession.

I welcome your commentary, thanks again!