There's a thunderstorm coming.
It's been coming all afternoon – the morning was silvery gray, and as the day went on, the sky got more and more blue-gray, the leaves more and more strikingly green, the air heavier. It has, I suspect, made me restless and discontent, and made the cats more nervous than they usually are. But I'm excited about it too. We had a crashing thunderstorm a few of weeks ago, bafflingly, during the cold snap we endured during the middle of April, but this will be the first thunderstorm that feels like summer's four-o-clock storm, the first real thunderstorm-season storm.
It is surprising that I am not more discomforted by thunderstorms than I am, since I spent most of my childhood and early adulthood being violently terrified by electricity. At times, this fear approached phobic status: I had great difficulty plugging things in or even looking at plugs or wall outlets; any slight electrical malfunction was enough to reduce me to incoherence; I was unable to turn on light switches after washing my hands, even if I had dried them; etc.
I don't know why this fear developed, nor was I ever able rationally to explain it. I have always been perfectly aware that I am not likely to actually electrocute myself if I take normal precautions when using electrical equipment, and I am also of course pleased with the things that electricity does for me on a daily basis. I just…became afraid. And it stuck with me for a long time. (This is pretty much my only really irrational terror, too. I am of course afraid of things it's normal to be afraid of: excessively indeterminate futures, house fires, losing loved ones, but these fears do not exceed normal status.)
I'm much better than I used to be -- in fact, almost not irrationally afraid at all. A lot of that comes from having pushed myself on it: I have dismantled two VCRs and rewired a lamp, have made myself keep using the hairdryer even when I am afraid it smells funny (this is usually just because a hair has gone in the back of it. I know this). I can plug things in just fine now. I replace light bulbs. I can sit with my back against electrical outlets.
But even in the height of my fear, somehow, I was never really afraid of the kind of electricity it would seem most logical to be afraid of – lightning. I don't like thinking about lightning strikes, of course, and I find stories of people encountering lightning extra-horrifying, but I do not typically become afraid during the normal process of a thunderstorm. (The exception to this: when my family moved to our very tall house when I was ten, I became very upset because my parents would not buy a lightning rod. I still think it would have been a good idea. If nothing else, we ought to support the legacy of Ben Franklin!)
Normally, in fact, I find thunderstorms exhilarating. The release that comes when the rain actually starts, for one, is like an environmental sigh, and the loudness of the thunder feels purging. I enjoy the overtness of thunderstorms, and, as I do not live in a tornado or hurricane-prone area, I also enjoy their temporariness. They are like carnival: loud, disruptive, possibly dangerous, but explicitly short-lived. In the summer here there is usually a ten minute thunderstorm around four o'clock at least twice a week, often more.
What I guess I'm finally leading up to, though, has less to do with thunderstorms than with my lack of fear of them – or, more properly, with my irrational fear of electricity within the house. I think, in the end, I'm all right with the things I obviously cannot control. They may be disruptive, they may be dangerous, they may even be deadly – I know that. It's the silent, hidden danger within what we think we have a handle on that is frightening. It is not the electricity that strikes with a loud boom that frightens me, but the electricity that surrounds me with a quiet hum, that is part of my life, of my self.
I used, in fact, at the height of my fear, to be seriously bothered by the idea that neural impulses were electric: inside my brain was a silent enemy, a force I needed to live, but that, given the slightest malfunction, would kill me. It wasn't death – sure, inevitable – that frightened me. I knew that was coming for everyone, though I also knew I could not know when. What scared me so much was not the fact of death but the terrible revelation of death-in-life. What I was most afraid of, I suppose, was being shocked.
It's been coming all afternoon – the morning was silvery gray, and as the day went on, the sky got more and more blue-gray, the leaves more and more strikingly green, the air heavier. It has, I suspect, made me restless and discontent, and made the cats more nervous than they usually are. But I'm excited about it too. We had a crashing thunderstorm a few of weeks ago, bafflingly, during the cold snap we endured during the middle of April, but this will be the first thunderstorm that feels like summer's four-o-clock storm, the first real thunderstorm-season storm.
It is surprising that I am not more discomforted by thunderstorms than I am, since I spent most of my childhood and early adulthood being violently terrified by electricity. At times, this fear approached phobic status: I had great difficulty plugging things in or even looking at plugs or wall outlets; any slight electrical malfunction was enough to reduce me to incoherence; I was unable to turn on light switches after washing my hands, even if I had dried them; etc.
I don't know why this fear developed, nor was I ever able rationally to explain it. I have always been perfectly aware that I am not likely to actually electrocute myself if I take normal precautions when using electrical equipment, and I am also of course pleased with the things that electricity does for me on a daily basis. I just…became afraid. And it stuck with me for a long time. (This is pretty much my only really irrational terror, too. I am of course afraid of things it's normal to be afraid of: excessively indeterminate futures, house fires, losing loved ones, but these fears do not exceed normal status.)
I'm much better than I used to be -- in fact, almost not irrationally afraid at all. A lot of that comes from having pushed myself on it: I have dismantled two VCRs and rewired a lamp, have made myself keep using the hairdryer even when I am afraid it smells funny (this is usually just because a hair has gone in the back of it. I know this). I can plug things in just fine now. I replace light bulbs. I can sit with my back against electrical outlets.
But even in the height of my fear, somehow, I was never really afraid of the kind of electricity it would seem most logical to be afraid of – lightning. I don't like thinking about lightning strikes, of course, and I find stories of people encountering lightning extra-horrifying, but I do not typically become afraid during the normal process of a thunderstorm. (The exception to this: when my family moved to our very tall house when I was ten, I became very upset because my parents would not buy a lightning rod. I still think it would have been a good idea. If nothing else, we ought to support the legacy of Ben Franklin!)
Normally, in fact, I find thunderstorms exhilarating. The release that comes when the rain actually starts, for one, is like an environmental sigh, and the loudness of the thunder feels purging. I enjoy the overtness of thunderstorms, and, as I do not live in a tornado or hurricane-prone area, I also enjoy their temporariness. They are like carnival: loud, disruptive, possibly dangerous, but explicitly short-lived. In the summer here there is usually a ten minute thunderstorm around four o'clock at least twice a week, often more.
What I guess I'm finally leading up to, though, has less to do with thunderstorms than with my lack of fear of them – or, more properly, with my irrational fear of electricity within the house. I think, in the end, I'm all right with the things I obviously cannot control. They may be disruptive, they may be dangerous, they may even be deadly – I know that. It's the silent, hidden danger within what we think we have a handle on that is frightening. It is not the electricity that strikes with a loud boom that frightens me, but the electricity that surrounds me with a quiet hum, that is part of my life, of my self.
I used, in fact, at the height of my fear, to be seriously bothered by the idea that neural impulses were electric: inside my brain was a silent enemy, a force I needed to live, but that, given the slightest malfunction, would kill me. It wasn't death – sure, inevitable – that frightened me. I knew that was coming for everyone, though I also knew I could not know when. What scared me so much was not the fact of death but the terrible revelation of death-in-life. What I was most afraid of, I suppose, was being shocked.
didn't you tell that story once of your first awareness of death being when a squirrel was electrocuted to death on your 4th birthday? i would imagine that was pretty traumatizing, but i don't know if your fear was only worsened by that, rather than seeded.