All my life, I've had an irrational
fear of bathrooms. Once I wondered if perhaps it was religious in
nature. After all, we're trained from birth to be ashamed of nudity
and anything involving a toilet. Upon closer inspection, I realized
that couldn't be the case. I didn't have an issue relieving myself in
the woods and there I had no walls for privacy. No, my specific fear
was ghosts in the bathroom, no doubt a result of countless horror
movies. Bathrooms in horror movies are always grim, terrifying
affairs with rusty pipes and flickering florescent bulbs that wash
out all colors but blue and gray. For years, I convinced myself that
this was an irrational fear, that while doing my business, I didn't
need to cast my eyes about at every sound, peering deeply at every
shadow, begging it not to move.
A year ago, as I finished bathing I
found myself staring down a ghost, a skeleton hanging there in the
shower where I had been only seconds ago. I trembled in terror. All
of my fears, all those years of worry. They had been justified. How
long had that ghost been there, I wondered in horror. Did he only now
manifest, or had he been in the shower with me, my eyes too full of
suds to realize. Did he see me? Had this suicidal skeleton been
watching me? Only then did I realize the true nature of my fear.
Maybe it wasn't the ghosts at all. Maybe all this time it was just
the fear of someone walking in on me.
- Originally mailed to L. Sims in Hattiesburg, Mississippi
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