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Indigo Vales

Tag Archives: spheksophobia

I Lose More Therapists This Way*

06 Tuesday Jul 2021

Posted by Kristine in Uncategorized

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brave, camping, change, Elisa, evolving, exaggeration, fear, friendship, hope, jellyfish, ocean, power, reality, spheksophobia, swimming, therapy, woman

I enter her comfy, cozy office, sink into the comfy, cozy couch and we get all the small talk out of the way. She knows I don’t want to talk about anything, I’d much rather babble on about current events or the weather, so she tries to get me to relax so I can share how I’m really feeling so I can feel better. She asked me to close my eyes. Yeah right, that only took five minutes for me to stay in, and then she asked me to imagine

…..sitting in the deep woods, woods filled with pine trees the breath of the breeze filling the boughs that made them sway, the scent of pine taking me away… I opened my eyes and said, “Yeahno. Nope. There’s bears. There’s bears and there’s yellowjack nests in the bottom of that tree. You know I have spheksophobia, I can’t go there, no bears, no hornets, no.”

May be an image of nature and tree
photo by Elisa Torres

I’m stiff on the couch again and she asks me to imagine the green hillside where Julie Andrews sings “The Hills Are Alive” amidst mountains and a beautiful blue sky, a scene she knows I love and helps me get to sleep. She asks me to sit down on a blanket and watch the moment. But the hills are alive with flowers and things that want flowers like bugs and bees and oh my god it’s all covered in bees and Nope. No. No thank you. I’m stiff again on her couch really wanting to talk about the ballots being audited in Arizona by Cyber Ninjas. She slowly brings me back to where I can see my sneakers on the Berber carpet, and I want an iced coffee in the worst way.

My therapist takes a sip from her coffee mug and returns it silently to the coaster on the side table. She says, “I want you to close your eyes again,” which takes another five minutes and she says “Imagine yourself floating. You are floating in the jade green waters of the Chesapeake, the place you love. The sun is warm but not too warm, the breeze is present but not assailing, you are floating, floating free and safe…” And I cut her off. “Nope. No. There’s jellyfish. Jellyfish. They’re all over. And things that touch my calf and and I don’t know what the hell that is because I can’t see it. I mean, if I can’t see it, then what is even the point of being here? No thanks.”

My therapist sighs and smiles, adjusting tactics and says, “Well ok, that’s fine. Close your eyes again please. And now you’re floating in your bathtub at home. Your apartment where the only sound is the air conditioner. Day in and day out, the world is quiet, as you like it, your most sacred safe place. You are floating in your bathtub, relaxed, thinking about the day, and …” I interrupt her. “Nope. No. I just washed the tub. I mean, I think I got all the cleaner out, but I’m not sure. I rinsed the tub out really good, I probably used more water than I should have, I mean, I really try to conserve water, but I’m not sure all the cleaner is out, so if I try to soak in the tub with that stuff still in there my labia might swell up and my vagina will follow suit and my uterus will *eject* because who the hell knows what’s really in those chemicals, so how about if I try again tomorrow after I rinse the tub out with scalding hot water for like 24 hours, it should be okay then, right? …. Right?


There’s bears in them woods and jellyfish in that water and it’s okay. My friend wrote about her time away and my current being had hackles up, red flags, fear which I throttled back slowly as I imagined myself there faced with a bear in the ferns, or maybe it was a deer, or nothing at all. After putting out my fear fires I felt amused because I can be a dork who can look at my real inside self and hear, “Well there you go. You got some shit to work on.” So thanks, Elisa for your allowing me to live vicariously through ya, and there was probably no bears. I doubt I will ever get over the yellowjack thing, but I’ll hit the water and the woods with you anytime.

*This essay was filled with exaggeration, but….

In Praise of Pain, Flying Things, and The Universe

28 Sunday Aug 2016

Posted by Kristine in Uncategorized

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Tags

evolving, fear, pain, spheksophobia, Universe

“You didn’t know that? You of all people?”

“No,” I said, tempering further reply.

“Yellow jackets, like many organisms, when you alarm or kill one, give off a pheromone that calls others for help.”

“Okay, good to know.”

“Really surprised you didn’t know that.”

“Yes, well, as long as I stay out of their way all is right with the world. I’ve developed some good tactics for doing that, actually.”

“Such as?”

“Oh, wearing perfume at night instead of during the day, avoiding wearing yellow. Not drinking from soda cans outside, only containers with closable lids. Staying away from abandoned cars where they might have made a nest. Keeping windows and door ledges clean. I also try to avoid eating mustard or ketchupy foods outside but that can’t always be helped. And never returning to Lake Compounce amusement park.”

“Oh, so basically never going outside, then. Nice life.” His tone brought it all back, but I knew there’s little point discussing the strides I’ve made managing a phobia with someone who doesn’t have one.

Yesterday I had the pleasure of dining by the Hudson River with friends, which is a really fancy way of saying we was chowing down on finger-licking barbecue food and beer at the Ribworks. All was well until a yellow jacket wafted down onto my glass. Guess he wanted a little sip of salty margarita.  I stayed in my seat and watched it for a few seconds, then calmly lifted myself from my seat, said excuse me, moved back a few feet, then waited for it to fly away, which it had no intention of doing, so my chivalric gentlemen waved it off my glass. G looked at me and said, “Really?”  I nodded and smiled, knowing that at least in this stage of my life I didn’t turn the table over and run out into traffic. (Had I been a Marine,  I would have given away our position and my comrades would have shot me on the spot.)  I said, “Horror movie bad guys wielding axes? Machetes? Fine. Bring.it.on. I gotta problem with yellowjacks, however.”  He wondered about that, so I explained it had to do with falling on one as a child, getting stung multiple times for the first time on the back of my tender little leg while mom was a block away, and the time my son was in his baby sling, I stepped on a ground nest and received multiple stings. We discussed the differences between honey bee and wasp for a little while, then went back to our drinks and talking baseball.

I’m trying to cultivate a harmonious existence with bees, but it’s not so easy for the little girl of me to do when a yellow jacket appears. Her mind overstates the memory of the pain, the most horrific pain she’d ever experienced, the memory of walking home alone, all that way without comfort, the humiliation of taking wounds when she was in the wrong, not the bug.

I wish we could all accept each other’s irrational fears, heck, irrational anythings for that matter, have patience with the other when the panic comes. It’s not for us to understand and certainly not to judge their fear or pain.  How lucky I am to be able to think kindly of laced wing moths in the corner of the old apartment; luna moth on the convenient store door in the rain; fragile, steadfast honey bees dressed in fuzzy amber; curious, quick carpenter bees; bumble bees whose flight defies physics; salamanders and newts who mind their own business between roots; roly poly moist toads standing guard on basement steps in the moonlight; copperhead baby wriggling on the factory floor, mouse running for its life amid screaming women on their office chairs.  Helping Yaro find a cup to catch the mouse, watching the guys capture the baby copperhead wearing welding gloves and tossing it out beyond the retaining pond instead of killing it.  When will I give this same patience, this same understanding to the yellow jacket? I do not know. The little girl of me once believed that having babies, bullet wounds, tattoos, and getting hit by a bus was preferable to the experience of a yellow jacket sting. I can marvel at my progress, but it still needs work. This emotional wound needs healing in order to make peace with the yellow and black.  I am grateful to the Universe who brought this to me.

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