Journal #12

There have been many times when I've been very afraid. There is the regular everyday fear, paranoia , and then there is real fear. I usually don't experience REAL fear. I mostly just feel paranoia, but this year there was a time when I actually was really fearful  So me and a couple of my friends went to a haunted house. To me, it wasn't actually scary. The 'scary' part was your own nervousness and paranoia of the unknown. We had no idea what was going to come next. Usually, to make the fear go away, you just grab on to the person in front of you and keep going. Well, one thing you should know about me is that I am very claustrophobic. I get very frightened when I get put in small spaces. Usually I don't have to worry about this fear day to day because i  don't rarely have to go in any area that makes me nervous and scared. Being in small spaces for a long time is extremely  frightening to me too. Anyway, so we went to this haunted house, and i didn't expect to be scared at all. I just wanted to see their decorations. The 'monsters' were just people in costume, i knew that. They were not any sort of threat whatsoever because i knew they were here to have fun too. So we go through this house. We go from room to room and there are all sorts of things to see. Each room is a different scene and is filled with different monsters in full body costume, which i thought looked really awesome. I really wasn't scared at all, and i just kept my hand on the back of my sisters jacket, or sometimes on my friends jacket, so i wouldn't get separated. We went through this dark maze, and i had no idea how small it was because i couldn't see, so that didn't scare me at all. It was all fun until we came to this certain dead end. There was just a slit in the wall, made up of the material blow up bouncy houses are made of.. I stared at it because i had no idea what was supposed to happen. Then my friend Ryan and my sister walked right into it, and because i didn't want to get left behind, i followed. It was TERRIBLE. The material pressed down on me from all sides, top, bottom, sides--everywhere. It was pitch black and i felt like i was being strangled alive. I had no idea how long it went on, or where we were even going, but i felt like someone was crushing me. My claustrophobia kicked in and i almost went into panic mode. Any second i was going to have a total freak out.  I can't even describe how scared i was. I know claustrophobia is listed as an 'abnormal' fear, but it was extreamely real to me and i almost couldn't stand it. I kept my hand on my sisters jacket and just prayed and prayed that we would get out of there, i was so terrified. It seemed to go on forever, and i felt that if we didn't break through in one second, i was just going to be suffocated to death.  Finally, we broke through, and i got a taste of fresh air. Relief flooded through me, and i looked back at the thing i just came out of. That was something that was completely and utterly terrifying for me.