So, since I already opened up and told you why I don’t like Christmas, I thought I’d open up a little more and tell you some things I’m scared of. Why? I don’t know. Because I want to. And because I heard this new song last week that kind of scared the crap out of me. More on that later. I’m scared of a lot of things. In New Orleans-speak (I lived near there for two years), I would say “I’m too scary.” Not as in “I’m too scary for some psycho to attack me,” (implying I would scare said psycho away), but as in “I’m too scary to watch the movie ‘Haunted House 27’, (as in “I’m WAY too chicken to watch a scary movie).

I’m scared of spiders. I know, I know, it’s a fairly common fear. But, seriously, they creep me out. Like, a lot. I’ve been scared of them my entire life. I can remember my little brothers torturing me with Grandaddy-longlegs….Ugh. I have cold shill bumps right now just thinking about it. If there’s anything that is more likely to make me scream and run away than a spider, no matter how tiny, I don’t want to know what it is. One of my Bio professors last semester studied spiders, so he was always throwing up what he thought were cool slides without warning. I stopped actually going to that class, except for exam days. Seriously. I just watched the lecture recordings. My nerves couldn’t handle it He even had a pic of spider poop. Spider poop? It never even occurred to me that that was a real thing. I mean, logically, I knew it existed, it just wasn’t anything that had ever crossed my mind. Thank you, weird (but funny) professor…

Heights. Yep. I don’t do ladders, even stepladders. Tall buildings that sway ever so slightly in the wind make me shudder. Stepping foot in a plane is a bit of a challenge for me, although I’m getting better at it, at least on short flights. And yes, I really do want to go sky-diving. I have no idea why.

Clowns. Yes, seriously. I’m really scared of clowns. It’s a more common fear than you think. There’s even a word for it: coulrophobia. I’m serious. Look it up. I’m sure there are many perfectly nice clowns out there, but I am scared of all of them. Not just Ronald McDonald and Stephen King’s Pennywise (OMG, “It” scared me so badly the first time I read it that I had to put it down for two weeks…), even your everyday, garden-variety circus clowns. I have no idea if I had a bad experience with a clown when I was a child or what, but they freak me out. A lot.

Okay, I heard this song on the radio last week, and it scared the crap out of me. Kacey Musgraves’ “Merry Go ‘Round.” It’s like conformity illustrated in a song. Conformity scares the hell out of me. Why would I want to go out and do something just because everyone else does? And this song…well, I grew up in a tiny town. Most of the kids I graduated with, heck, most of my friends now, are married with kids. And I’m not knocking that. It’s just not for me. Because they are all content with where they are and what they have, they don’t seem to want more. I want more. Last weekend, when I was hanging out with the Cynic and the Saint, we were talking about climbing Mount Kilimanjaro and the Cynic said “Oh, that would be really cool. But I’d probably just watch the video instead of actually doing it.” It’s funny, but it’s true. The Saint agreed with her. “Yeah, that’s probably more our style.” I’m not saying I would ever be able to actually go climb a mountain, but it’s something I’ve always thought would be really awesome. Something I’d really like to do, instead of just being like everyone else and spectating someone else’s life.

I’m also scared of settling. I see too many people in my life who have settled for less, and have somehow managed to convince themselves that what they have is exactly what they wanted to start with. I don’t want to settle for less than everything I want, for less than what I deserve, for less than everything. Period. That’s the point of becoming my true self.