Fears

"How blessed are some people, whose lives have no fears, no dreads; to whom sleep is a blessing that comes nightly, and brings nothing but sweet dreams."

- Bram Stoker

A few weeks ago I was enjoying one of my better sleeps of the past few months. Sweat-free and dream-laden. I don't remember exactly what I was dreaming about, but I'm sure an observer would have noticed a subtle smile on my face.

It's a bit of a creepy picture, to imagine being watched while you sleep. And yet, while I was sleeping, I somehow sensed it. It's the strangest feeling, sensing another's gaze, and I think many of us can relate to it. Like human beings can communicate telepathically in some way.

Anyway, I tried to ignore my sensations of an onlooker, but soon felt an itch on my cheek. And I realized what exactly my intruder was.

I swatted at what I believed to be a mosquito buzzing around my face, and felt the rigid, twitching body of an enormous cockroach who was napping on my cheek. We both woke up faster than a lightning strike as I launched him like a shot putter.

Unfortunately (fortunately), I sleep with a mosquito net around my bed which prevented me from putting a lot of distance between myself and the bug. I could see the silhouette of my exoskeletal bunkmate dangling from the mesh. I had thrown him right into a soft landing pad, and he was now scurrying up to the highest point of my anti-malarial fortress.

I'd never realized how much I don't like the thought of scurrying until that moment. And yet, I couldn't help myself as I scurried from under the net to the floor. I jerked upright in the darkness, as though someone had poured cold water down my back, and jumped on the light switch.

Squinting in the brightness, I assessed the situation. There was a cockroach. It had tapdanced on my face, and after we both had a minor panic attack, it was now trying to hide in the folds at the top of the mosquito net.

I must've stood frozen for ten minutes, trying to negotiate a way back to bed. I don't like killing things in general, but then again I'd never had a fear of cockroaches until I almost inhaled one.

I have not experienced the immense irrationality of fear in quite some time. My heart beat too quickly for my thoughts, and I couldn't sort out my next action. I was gripped in a logic-less state, and could do nothing but watch the bug through the mesh.

In the end it wasn't pretty. I decided that I couldn't touch the cockroach again, that would be too icky. I considered shaking him out onto the floor, but as logic wafted back through my foggy consciousness it occurred to me that he might make his way back up to my face once the lights were off. Nothing makes you more self-interested than fear.

I ended up killing the cockroach. Well, flushing. I carefully removed the whole mosquito net from the ceiling, carried it at arms length to the bathroom, and forced the insect invader into the toilet by swatting at the net like a cat pawing a creepy new toy. He scurried desperately one final time as he hit the porcelain, but I was too quick and I lurched the lever down, surely rushing him to a stinky, sewagey death.

At least, I think he died.

I went to bed wondering if the rumours about cockroaches' impossible abilities to survive were true. What if cockroaches could swim? What if he came back with friends?

I didn't sleep a wink after that.

I don't have many fears, and I've since calmed down, and laughed at the ridiculousness of my close encounter with a cockroach. But I'm amazed how easily I killed him that night. Fear can make people do incredible things. I'm not even sure what it was about that situation that scared me so. Was it that I was startled? Was it because I was alone with the cockroach? What was I afraid he would do?

In what other ways is power motivated so irrationally, than by our fears?