Childhood Inhibitions

It's funny how they say that you grow out of things that used to creep you out. Just give it time.

My question is really, do you???

I started to ponder over this, when I realised I'm not super comfortable in the dark when I'm alone, except when I'm knocked out cold. Well it's a belief that one grows out of kiddy inhibitions. And I don't believe it!

My inhibitions date back to the mid 1990's, when I was a little girl. The adults generally scared the crap out of kids just to make sure the little brats don't get out of hand. Well, I was a brat, and my parents believed in treating all brats equally. So I, too was subjected to inhumane 'scaring the crap out of kids' treatment. Gone were the days of partiality, I say.

The conventional 'Boogieman's gonna get you' worked wonders with me. And as I aged from a 4 year old to that of 5, the dark descriptions grew worse.

Slowly the concept of Ghosts eerily crept in as well. Yep, those evil fiends didn't spare anything. The haunted stories oozed out, with an abandoned house that was all dark and the friendly neighbourhood cemetery, surrounded by the dying trees with dried leaves that rustled in the dead of the night, the wind howling breaking the silence and calling out to the dead.

Thats all I needed. I have a pretty wild imagination. All one has to do is set the foundation and there you have a tormented girl whose too chicken to get out of bed in the middle of the night to take a pee!

And even worse is when I have to go from one room to another, crossing the creepy dark corridor. I can't even keep my eyes closed and do that cos when I tried that, I slammed into the wall and missed the entrance by just that much! And I looked like Rudolf in pain for about a week or so.

Then comes that age where you want to watch these horror/ thriller flicks cos you want to go with the flow but something inside goes against that idea. In my case, I was just stupid for not listening to that vibe. I think we went for this movie 'Deep Blue Sea'. Took the night show and saw it on big screen. Little girl watching Big Sharks devour people as soon as they touched any surface even close to water, does not give the best sense of security. Not only did I not sleep for many nights to come, I didn't enter a swimming pool for a long long time. And at that time, by swimming pool I mean drowning in a tiled container with a depth of 2 feet.

I thought I was totally over my little phobia with water and sharks. But all that changed when I went on vacation to Tioman Islands not too long ago. We went snorkeling and the water was absolutely beautiful. It was an infinite expanse of blue, blue and more blue with fish of such brilliance just surrounding you. I couldn't help but feel like Ariel from The Little Mermaid *sheepish grin*.

That was all lovely until I was pushed by the tide into a rather isolated portion of the island. All of a sudden I felt silence like I was the only living soul on earth and when I looked straight into the water I couldn't help feel that something big and bad was heading my way and with absolute silence under the water surface there was nothing to distract me from that train of thought. I felt some of my worst nightmares being resurrected from the burial ground of dead dreams!

GAH! That just sent shivers down my spine.

So, I really doubt that our childhood inhibitions and scares really do die away or whether they're just repressed to such an extent that you seem to believe you've overcome them, only to find them just waiting for your most vulnerable moment to strike; lurking in the darkest crevices of your mind waiting...