Ch angingFears Word s

b yGeorgi aNolan

Everything was a stressful experience for me as a child. In any everyday situation, I had the potential to die.

In an old video of me as a toddler, circa 2003, I try to overcome what I saw as a major obstacle. A two-inch high stone step in our back garden. Instead of simply stepping down it, as my twin sister tries to demonstrate, I sit on the top level, scoot my legs over the ‘drop’, and stand up on the bottom level. This was just the beginning of my worrier (not to be confused with ‘warrior’) journey.

Visions of falling headfirst into the metal grate whenever I used the David Jones escalator would plague me. On gloomy, wet days, I was certain Adelaide would be flooded in its entirety. Cracked pavements and broken mirrors were a harbinger of misfortune. Booming, unidentified noises in the sky meant that a gigantic asteroid was hurtling down to wipe out humanity. Hand dryers were a cause for concernhowever, I’m not entirely sure why my three-year-old self thought this. Mum’s threehour long hair appointments meant she’d packed up and left us, or she’d died on the way, during, or on the way back. If I didn’t hug all my stuffed animals before bed, one of them would get spiteful and murder me in my sleep - mind you, I hadn’t even watched Chucky; I’d watched Toy Story. If I didn’t pull my covers up and over my head, nearly suffocating myself, a thief would break into our home, or I’d wake up to see a ghostly figure staring at me. Alternatively, if a corner of my duvet exposed my foot, I’d be dragged out of my bed by a demon like in Paranormal Activity. Once, at the South Australian Museum, a lizard crawled up my pant leg in the outdoor seating area. I desperately took my pants off in public to locate the reptile, by which point it had probably gotten bored and crawled back out and into the shrub. Any itch in my trousers was then thought to be another lizard, meaning my mum would begrudgingly buy me a new pair of jeans if the one I was wearing ever itched. It turned out that they all did.

This fear has manifested as anxiety in my older years. Trivial things like itchy trousers and hand dryers didn’t bother me anymore. As an adult, stuff like questioning what I’ll do with my life, or whether I’m ever trying hard enough, are new sources of fear. This seeps into my subconscious and surfaces into my dreams - usually I’m being publicly ridiculed (which is not surprising, considering the lizard incident) or disappointing my loved ones.

Isn’t it funny how our fears change as we get older? They change from the most trivial, nonsensical things to great, big existential burdens that haunt us even as we sleep. I’ve heard that eventually, as we grow and change and age, these worries lose their significance, their power over us.

All I know is that I’d trade my fear of failure for a fear of hand dryers any day.

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