When we first moved in, we put Ferris in Michael's room and shut the door. In the beginning, we even locked the door just for good measure. After some time, the doors would be left open and the native cats and dog would wander in to find a new, strange, VERY bristled/hissing smallish version of a cat. Eventually, Ferris developed the courage to cross the hall into the guest room, and he now spends his days running full speed in and out of the guest room and Michael's room. But what is incredibly odd is that he doesn't go any further down the hall. Seriously. Whenever we go downstairs, we can hear him meowing from the doorway. And we know it's from the doorway, because I snapped this picture once as I came up the stairs:
See that little blackish dot on the door? That's Ferris, and that is as far as he will go down the hallway. It doesn't make sense -- at the apartment, he left no nook unexplored, no patch of carpet unscratched (luckily he didn't leave any marks...). But for some reason, he cowers at the prospect of venturing down the hallway. What a fraidy cat, in every literal sense.
It takes one to know one, though. I, too, am quite the fraidy cat. My list of fears is quite long. Sure, there's the usual death, loved ones' death, war, etc -- also throwing up (who is afraid of THAT, I mean really), and of course failure.
I almost faced a fear earlier this week. Michael and I talked about watching The Grudge, a movie that had me awake for two days, a movie that had me running into the lobby during the movie, just for some reprieve from that creepy Ehhkkk-ehhkk-ehhkk noise. I shudder just thinking about it. But then, the dog got trapped in the laundry room and made so much noise that my heart was pounding and I realized was definitely not ready to face that particular fear. All of you who laughed at the silly, screaming little girls in the movie: Shut it, please? Thanks.
Then there's this little gem, thanks to some people from the comic fury chatzy last night:
(DISCLAIMER: seriously, don't click on that unless you are not easy to scare. It's awful. Oh, and if you DO clicky, you have to scroll all the way down to the bottom. Just do it; you'll see why. Make sure your sound is on).
So yes. Terrified. And terrified of what, exactly? A comic? Asian special effects, and a noise made by the movie's own director? Why? I guess it's because anything is technically possible. What if this is some kind of evil ring-like web page, that haunts you for the rest of your life until it finally makes you lost your mind before the creature consumes you. Or something.
I don't understand my fears. I don't understand being afraid of a normal bodily function, or being afraid of something that was animated and put online. I don't understand being afraid of failure to the point that Homer Simpson's age old wisdom "Trying is the first step towards failure" starts to ring true. Everybody fails, right? Maybe I should assess myself based on the general scrapbook of moments and not just one snapshot. That is what we learned was the best kind of assessment after all... I think at some point we just have to accept our failures, learn from them, and one day be able to see them as lessons, rather than failures. I consider myself to have no regrets, only lessons learned. But I'm not 100% sure that's true. I still kick myself for walking out of a job fair that was hiring on the spot, just for getting one phone call offer, especially when that offer amounted to nothing. And I tell myself that there was a reason that one didn't work out, and that there was a reason I walked away from the job fair. There is really no point in dwelling on what we don't know.
Yet "the unknown" is number one on the list of people's fears, isn't it? We aren't afraid of death because it hurts. Even if it does hurt, it's only for a second and then it's over. We're afraid because we don't know what happens after. We have faith, sure. But the very definition of faith implies that there must be some unknown. Ferris isn't afraid of the hallway because the dog's cage is in it. Usually the dog is in the room with Ferris, dodging the threats that Ferris hisses and growls at him. No, Ferris is afraid of the hallway because he doesn't know what could be in it, where it goes, what lurks behind the doorways ten feet away from the one he knows and loves.
One day I will have to face my fears. I search for jobs every day, because the lack of money overrides the fear of coming up short. And maybe one day I will strike gold, so to speak, and find out exactly why nothing else worked out. And it will all make sense.
But I am not clicking that link again.
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