I wasted a lot of my youth trying to grow up. Sadly, I still act like an idiot. I blame the horror movies. I watched every scary movie I could find when I was a teen. My parents told me not to, but I ignored them. Apparently, my goal was to stunt my emotional growth, because here\u2019s the result:<\/p>\n
1. Sometimes I jump<\/em> into bed so that whatever is under there can\u2019t grab my ankles. You don\u2019t need to tell me there\u2019s nothing under the bed\u2014I know<\/em> that, because I\u2019ve checked. Many times.<\/p>\n 2. Whenever I close a medicine cabinet, I expect to see the reflection of something freaky right behind me. The fact that this has not happened to me in 53 years does not help\u2014I still<\/em> expect to see something horrid when I close a medicine cabinet.<\/p>\n 3. I tuck my feet under the covers at night. I can\u2019t sleep if my feet are exposed. This is ridiculous, because if a monster did<\/em> come into the room, he wouldn\u2019t say, \u201cOh, I see your feet are covered. I\u2019ll just let myself out and go kill the guy next door.\u201d<\/p>\n 4. I have to hum the tune of Greensleeves when I step into the shower. Otherwise, that jarring Psycho music will start playing in my head.<\/p>\n 5. I cannot sit beside a window at night unless the curtain is closed. With the curtain closed, I can\u2019t see who\u2019s out there staring in at me, so I\u2019m safe. Right? Right?<\/em><\/p>\n 6. When I hear a crackling, settling noise in the basement, I get goosebumps. Every. Single. Time.<\/p>\n 7. I try to keep the floor of the hall closet clear, so if there\u2019s anyone hiding in there, I\u2019ll be able to see their feet. There\u2019s never anyone hiding in there.<\/p>\n So, where do I go from here? I\u2019d like<\/em> to say I\u2019m a functioning adult, yet I\u2019m still obsessively jumping into beds, hiding my feet under blankets, closing curtains, checking closets, humming Greensleeves and getting creeped out by bathroom mirrors. Maybe I need to distract myself from all of these irrational fears. I hear The Conjuring 2<\/em> is a good movie.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" I wasted a lot of my youth trying to grow up. Sadly, I still act like an idiot. I blame the horror movies. I watched every scary movie I could find when I was a teen. My parents told me not to, but I ignored them. Apparently, my goal was to stunt my emotional growth, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_s2mail":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-451","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-funny-bits"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/brendakearns.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/451","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/brendakearns.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/brendakearns.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/brendakearns.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/brendakearns.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=451"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"http:\/\/brendakearns.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/451\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":455,"href":"http:\/\/brendakearns.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/451\/revisions\/455"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/brendakearns.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=451"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/brendakearns.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=451"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/brendakearns.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=451"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}