2112: 1984

In response to The Daily Post’s writing prompt: “1984.”

“You’re locked in a room with your greatest fear. Describe what’s in the room.”

My immediate reaction to this prompt was to say that the room was absolutely full of spiders. And to be fair, that would pretty much scare the shit out of me, particularly if they were of the deadly variety.

But that would be too easy. Someone who truly wanted to break me psychologically — as opposed to kill me — would go for something much more subtle, and something that wouldn’t physically hurt me, but which would deal some damage regardless.

And, on reflection, I came up with an answer pretty quickly.

There is nothing in the room. Nothing at all.

The walls are plain. The floor is plain. The ceiling is plain. When the door closes, you can’t even see its frame, so flush with the wall it is. There’s no clear delineation between floor, wall and ceiling; no sharp corners, no right angles; everything just sort of flows into one another, making the room take on a somewhat otherworldly quality where no matter which direction you face, you see the same thing.

The nothingness extends to sound, too. There is not a single sound in the room, save for any noises I might make. I become very aware of my own breathing, and of my heartbeat pounding in my ears. But there are no other sounds; I can’t hear anyone moving around outside, and my captor certainly doesn’t seem to be in any sort of hurry to communicate with me. Perhaps they’re just watching somehow — though it’s impossible to distinguish even a tiny spy camera anywhere in the room, because that would be a distinguishing feature by which I would be able to orient myself, and clearly that would go against the intention of this place.

The light level in the room would remain constant; not so bright as to be dazzling, but just slightly darker than comfortable. The kind of light you’re bathed in when in an environment lit by a bare bulb; a cold light that seems devoid of home comforts and humanity. A light that is threatening, rather than welcoming. A light that beckons with a smirk on its face, rather than inviting you in with open arms.

And of course, there are no other people in the room. No-one communicating with me. No means for me to get a message to the outside, and seemingly no means for the outside to get a message to me, either.

It’s lonely. And the combination of the ever-constant light level, the total lack of sound and the lack of people or even things with which to communicate makes it impossible to tell how much time is passing. There’s nothing to do, nothing to see, nothing to focus my attention on. The room is completely devoid of meaning; it’s devoid of joy, but it’s also devoid of other emotions, too. It doesn’t even inherently inspire “fear”; it just is, and that’s the scary thing about it. It’s impassive, cold, unyielding. No way out. No way in. No-one to help me. No way to distract myself. I just have to wait. And wait. And wait. Alone.

That’s a room that would break me. I don’t know how long it would take, but it would get me eventually. So kindly don’t put me in anywhere like that any time soon, please. Thank you.

#oneaday, Day 246: Feel the Fear

Irrational fears are weird. It’s human nature to feel the “fight or flight” response, of course. But the things which trigger said response are very peculiar indeed.

Take spiders. I remember being mortally afraid of spiders when I was a kid, and I’m still not particularly fond of them right now. As in, I’d probably freak out and do the dance of fear should one start crawling up my arm. Though I’m fine with little ones now, whereas any spider of any size used to scare the shit out of me. And, growing up in the country, we got some quite big spiders.

Now, fear of the kind of car-sized man-eating spiders you get in hot countries and/or under your toilet seat in Australia? That’s perfectly rational. But fear of tiny little spiders that you can literally blow away accidentally by breathing on them? Less rational.

And then you get into the more esoteric phobias out there. Pogonophobia: the fear of beards. How does that come about? I remember suffering from this one, too, when I was a kid. My father returned from a trip abroad with a beard he didn’t have before and I was freaked out by it. I don’t know if it was because he looked so different from how he did before, or if I just had some deep-seated need to be far away from beards at that particular age. Thankfully I’ve got over that particular fear now, otherwise my Bearded Justice credentials would surely be revoked.

And then there’s the really odd ones, like Lyssophobia, which is fear of hydrophobia. A phobia of a phobia is almost too meta for words. Except it’s not, because there’s a word for it. But surely it’s possible to get into an endless loop in that way? Is there someone out there who’s afraid of being afraid of hydrophobia? Possibly.

The human mind is a mysterious, strange and wonderful thing, and there are some things which will probably never be understood. Fear is one of those things. It’s a powerful motivating factor for some people; driving oneself to stay as far away from one’s fears as possible can spur people on to do things that they really want or need to. But at the other end of the spectrum, it’s surely easy for some fears to become dangerous obsessions, or crippling social disabilities.

In that sense, those of us who are just afraid of the idea of a big hairy spider with poison fangs have probably got the better end of the whole deal.

Though I think we can probably all agree that encountering a bright red spider with a beard who looked like the devil and was offering you a jar of peanut butter would be a fairly universally terrifying experience.

#oneaday, Day 145: Fear is for the Weak

I had an ambitious and experimental post planned, but time got the better of me so it can wait until tomorrow.

Instead, I am on my way out to my buddy Kalam’s birthday bash. There will be drinking involved.

I don’t normally go out this late. I usually overthink things and then end up not doing anything at all. But tonight, I thought, fuck it. There are times when it’s OK to just do, not think. So my intention for tonight is to follow that philosophy. Hesitation is for the weak. The contented man doesn’t regret missed opportunities. And other proverbs that I’ve just made up.

Tonight, my intention is to try and go more with gut instinct. Hesitation and lack of confidence holds mr back to a ridiculous degree and the only way to fix that is to do something about it for yourself.

I have no idea if it will actually work. But this, at least, is the intention. There will doubtless be Twitter updates throughout the evening depending on whether things go swimmingly or are a disastrous failure that make me never want to show my face in public again.

But I’ve got to try, at least. So here goes.