F-ing spider people.

Today, I took a nap, and I had the weirdest dream. I dreamt about spider people.

When I say spider people, I don't mean Spiderman. Because Spiderman is fucking cool. He swings around buildings using silly string that shoots out of his wrists, beats up bad guys, and kisses girls upside-down.

Kissing girls upside-down = cool

But these spider people weren't cool. They didn't kiss girls upside-down, and hell, you wouldn't want them to.
They had perfectly normal, human heads....but their bodies....
It was like someone stuck a human head on a giant, bloated spider.

The bodies weren't just like spiders either. They had clothes, that stretched over their freaky circular backs, and creepy arms/legs that stuck out of their many many sleeves with human hands stuck on the ends.

Interestingly though, they weren't really "bad" or evil. It wasn't a nightmare kinda situation. They were just freaky.

So what the hell does that mean? I don't even know.

All I know is, next time I dream about spider people, it better feature Spiderman.

...because Spiderman is fucking cool.

Phobia - 1 Me - 0

In case you didn't know, a phobia is defined as:

a persistent, irrational fear of a specific object, activity, or situation that leads to a compelling desire to avoid it.

Believe it or not, I suffer from a rather acute form of Ligyrophobia, also known as "the fear of noise". More specifically, I have the awful, all-encompassing fear of the sound of gunshot.

Let me back up a second. For those of you who know me quite well, you might be thinking, "Wait what? You know about guns, her friends love guns, what's the problem?"

I do not suffer from the fear of guns. I can see them, touch them, understand how they function and so on. I am not phobic about the idea of getting shot (I have a healthy dose of respect and normal fear like most people). However, I am literally terrified of the sound that it produces.
There is no logic behind this. I am a fairly logical individual, and I understand that there is no basis behind my fear. Therefore, it is a phobia.

It used to be worse. Anything remotely sounding like a gunshot would make me cry. For example, the sound of a bass drum being hit. I still have to either cover my ears or be indoors when fireworks go off, or I will in fact shriek in terror. I couldn't go to see a movie in theaters if I knew that there would be guns. At least I've gotten over that part.

So today, I decided to climb Mt.Everest. Unfortunately, the only ways to conquer a phobia is to either have hypnotism done (no thank you), or exposure therapy. I've been rather tired of running away from pretty firework displays and being unable to go to the range with my friends, so I went to the range today.

I shot an assault rifle - an Norinko SKS-D Sporter. Six times to be precise.

This is the part where you want to hear that I had a great experience, realized the irrationality of my fears, and cured myself of my phobia.
If you'd like to believe that, go ahead and stop reading. Change the page to youtube or something.

After the first shot, I started crying. I just told myself: "Don't run. Don't run." Over and over and over until I finished shooting. Once I left, I felt numb.
I crumbled. I couldn't really think for about an hour afterwards. I cried a lot. I might have screamed, but I really can't be sure. My everything trembled. I gnashed my teeth, pulled at my hair, and fell apart.

I don't know if I'll be able to do that again. I do know that I was able to pinpoint my phobia though - it was easier when I shot the gun because I knew when the sound would occur. But the people around that was shooting - that was the worst.

But hell, at least I did it. I gave it a fighting chance. And that's all I could really ask for.