[Outdated, please look at pinned post] Casual Conversation

Answering the phone. Listening to voicemails.

There's no reason I should fear these now, but I was hit by a car back when I was in college (nearly 20 years ago now), and I had no health insurance and couldn't pay any bills. I was already barely affording to eat.

So, almost every single call I got was related to a bill that I knew I couldn't pay. The trauma of that has stayed with me to this day and I will often leave voicemails which are perfectly innocuous unlistened to for days, weeks, eternity....

That kind of stress just stays with you.

Phone calls. Knowing I have to make a phone call wrecks my entire week.

Answering work emails from last September, currently at it now. So late that I'm afraid to even reply now.

Going to the dentist. Someone in my mouth like that bothers me to no end for some reason. The last time I had a toothache I yanked it out myself at home with a pair of pliers.

Unfortunately, I'm actually going to the dentist in about 4 hours from now because of two impacted wisdom teeth. I should have done this a long time ago but I guess I'm a sucker for punishment.

Still not looking forward to it, but I'll be happy when it's over.

For a long time I had a fear of plumbing. It mostly stemmed from growing up in a house severely falling apart, and I had incompetent guardians, so I felt stressd that if invisible pipes in the wall broke, it would cause cataclysmic water damage, and sane adults in other households always sort of nodded knowingly that water damage was Very Bad, so clearly if something broke in our house it would be on me to fix it, but I was only 8 and didn't know what to do and my guardians were mentally ill and useless to go to for help because they'd start screaming about the 90s equivalent of maga shit. Like, I never knew what topic might set my mom off, it could be the most innocent thing.

So yeah. Thr shower making funny whines when you run it? Scares the crap out of me because I don't know how to fix it and everything you would touch to fix is behind drywall and Water Damage is Bad according to saner adults outside my family circle.

Answering the phone. Listening to voicemails.

There's no reason I should fear these now, but I was hit by a car back when I was in college (nearly 20 years ago now), and I had no health insurance and couldn't pay any bills. I was already barely affording to eat.

So, almost every single call I got was related to a bill that I knew I couldn't pay. And they were relentless. The trauma of that has stayed with me to this day and I will often leave voicemails which are perfectly innocuous unlistened to for days, weeks, eternity....

That kind of stress just stays with you.

This also extends to opening the mail.

When I was a kid I was absolutely certain that at some point in my life I was going to have a close call with quick-sand.

For most of my life it was money. I'm fine with large numbers but put a "$" in front of it and I'd head for the door.

Setting up doctor's appointments.

Also having to deal with people making conversation of my sexual interests with that intruding in what would otherwise be perfectly good conversation.

Being a mom. I'm afraid of becoming one and then having to do a balancing act of loving them the right way for eighteen years.

Being trapped in a social situation where the group has implicitly agreed to sit down and watch broadcast TV and talk about all the commercials like they were relevant topics to us.

Handling bills and other paperwork.

That my country does not have proper social safety nets and is setup so all but the richest will fall in abject poverty.