This week over at Mama Kat’s Writer’s Workshop the topic I chose was:
Where does that fear come from? Write about something that frightens you that other people might find ridiculous. Write about it in a poem, a story, or whatever.
I was working down in my basement a couple of September’s ago. It was a partially finished basement and I was working from home so I had turned part of it into an office space. I was on the phone with a patient giving out medical advice when I saw two black things go quickly by my feet out of the corner of my eye. As for mentioned I was on the phone with a patient so no screaming was allowed and I could not pick up my stuff and run. So I picked my feet up, finished my phone call and just to make sure I wasn’t seeing things I hit the side of the desk. Which resulted in two black rodents (most people refer to them as mice) darting out and running quickly down the wall. I then grabbed my work stuff never to work down in that basement again except to do some laundry and pack when it was time to move.
Now the average person from what I can tell is not fond of having creatures in their living space. Well I was hysterical. I cried, panicked, cried, and did not sleep. I told anyone who would listen and really anyone who would not listen. I argued with you if you told me that maybe, I was making a bigger deal out of this mouse issue than necessary. I researched the possible health implications of mouse droppings on infants if they ingested any of it. I called my landlord, I wanted the little vermin’s executed, and I did not care about animal rights. The sent in the maintenance people and in the end caught five mice over eight weeks. I would not check the traps and I did not want to know where they were set.
This level of fear was not new to me but it had been quite a while since I had felt it. Since getting sober a couple of years prior I had been practicing facing my fears one by one and finding that if, I pushed on them, they would evaporate. It was not the case with this one. My sponsor was away at the time of the mouse situation and then my son ended up in the hospital after having a grand mal seizure so I do not think I ever really gave myself the chance to “lift the rock” and see what that fear was really about until this winter.
We were getting into the car and I saw that the boy’s car seats had been torn and that same woman who is my sponsor had to inform me that they were not torn but that a mouse had eaten at them. Well the scene was not much different. Tears, yelling, you name it. This time was different though. I received a big gift. I had someone there to walk through the fear with me when I was ready and see that it is not the mice that are the problem. It is what the mice represent. It is the fear that I am not capable of protecting my children or myself. That at anytime some unforeseen animal or person can just come in and hurt us. Those fears come from a time and a place that are no longer part of me but sometimes they show their ugly head in a way that I least expect it. Like in the face of a field mouse who is looking to get warm and for a yummy snack one of my toddlers left for him!
