When You Don't Know You're Supposed To Be Afraid

Mask failure...

Pretty cool, right? That’s a bathroom that was constructed over an old elevator shaft. The drop is fifteen stories, and they helpfully light up the shaft so you can be intimately aware of how far down you will fall if the glass floor breaks.

Not everyone is afraid of heights. There are plenty of people that can use that restroom without any trouble at all and they are not psychopathic. However, there is at least an awareness that most people would be afraid of that drop and might show some trepidation about going inside that room. A psychopath, unless they have previously learned that most people have some level of fear of heights wouldn’t even think about it. It looks fine, so it probably is, right? Right.

Psychopaths have to have a reference for things that scare neurotypicals in order to appear normal, and trust me, there are often failures in appearing normal, especially when we are young. This post is just to go over some of the more notable failures that I have committed in my life. Some of them will be serious, some will be more funny in nature.

When I was younger I attended a camp that had communal showers. I was shaving my legs, and when I shave my legs I just whip the razor up my legs and get it done super fast. I have other things to do. When I looked up I had literally gathered a crowd of girls watching me in awe or horror, I’m not sure which, and asked, “Aren’t you afraid you’re going to cut yourself?”

And I thought, “No, why would I be? Should I be? Hmm… this seems like a weird thing to be afraid of.” As it turns out, knives and razors are things to have a healthy fear of, go figure, I had no idea.

I was out with a friend when I was fairly young, I think under ten. Some guy pulled up and asked the time while actively masturbating. I burst out laughing at him. I thought it was the most absurd thing I had ever seen. He was not pleased, and in fact, was pretty pissed, so he drove away in a tizzy. My friend was very upset, I couldn’t understand why. I still find it ridiculous. I couldn’t understand why that would traumatize anyone.

My sister was with a man who is now serving time for the torture and murder of a young child who was in his and his current girlfriend’s care. He was very abusive to my sister but she stayed with him. He was abusive to every woman he had ever had a relationship with. He was a douche. He and my sister had a kid, not the one that was murdered. My sister had left him before that, but it was probably why she stayed as long as she did.

One weekend, the first one I had ever been left home alone back when I was in high school my sister called from a park. She had run away from him and he was looking for her; could I come and get her? So I did.

When I arrived he had just gotten there as well. He intended to take her back home. I stood between them without the mask on and said, by all means, try, but he would be going through me first. He and I locked gazes and he started screaming and cursing at me. I just stared at him. He threw up his arms and stalked off still yelling. I turned back to my sister and told her to get in the car. She scurried to do so and we drove away.

He never came to the house that weekend. He had before when our parents were there, and this time he knew that they weren't. I said something about that after our parents returned and she told me she wasn't surprised. That if I weren't her sister she would have gone the other way as well. I asked what she meant, I wasn't diagnosed back then. She said that it was like looking at another person. She had felt frozen because of him but when I told her to get in the car she was afraid not to. She was more afraid of me, than she was of him.

She never asked me if I was afraid, she just said that she knew that I wasn't. She said she had never seen him back down from anyone and she didn't know what to think. Mind you, I am not a large person, I am rather slight actually. It was not size intimidation as my sister is a much larger person than I am. It was what he felt I suppose. Whatever it was, he never again tried to tangle with me, and in fact, he never came near me again despite them getting back together for a good while after this event.

When it comes to danger it is about weighing the situation. If leaving is the correct move, I will do so. If standing my ground is the correct choice I do that instead. I do have a dog story. I came home quite late at night one night and two rottweilers had gotten out of their yard. They were skulking around the neighborhood, but as it was very late and they were mostly black I didn’t notice that they were about.

When we came face to face, I dropped the mask and had a bit of a stare-down with them sending them on their way. I was never afraid of them, it never occurred to me that I should be. I was annoyed that they would inconvenience me and think that they would attempt to corner me.

My car broke down on the way to work one day, and I didn’t have a phone. Not being interested in being stranded I strode out into oncoming traffic in front of a car forcing them to stop. I then proceeded to get into their car and direct the man where I wanted him to go and what I needed. Thinking about that now, from his perspective, I imagine that some strange woman walking out into the oncoming lane of a freeway and then just climbing into your car and then instructing you as to what the immediate future was going to be must have been terrifying. For all he knew I was a serial killer, or part of a robbery team, or I planned to rob him myself. To me, it was just what I needed to do in order to complete my day.

In my life, I have had a habit of dealing with situations like this. I know what I want to get done or where I need to be, and will recruit strangers to make that happen. It only occurs to me later, usually at the behest of others, that the situation is put into context that my cognitive empathy can grasp, or… I get yelled at because I stupidly endangered myself.

There are plenty more of these, but from here they get more identifiable. As in, if I talk about them, some people may recognize them and that isn’t the outcome I am looking for. So instead, I will speak in more generalities instead of specifics. If I were exploring an abandoned place and the floor fell out from underneath one of my feet, or if I found myself suddenly slipping and falling, I have the initial internal shot of adrenaline that I think everyone has. That shot I think is what allows us as humans to course correct and not die. However, that’s all I have. There is no fear, there is no sense of relief that I didn’t fall, just a sort of, “Oh, that’s a thing that just happened.”

I have nearly died several times, and none of them have ever injected me with a sense of fear, and that can be a problem when I am around people that are themselves, afraid. Oh, I thought of another one.

Anyone here ever play Fatal Frame? If you did, this should look familiar. Don’t play that if you scare easily.

So, on to the story. I was playing Fatal Frame very late at night. Three or four, something like that. I am the only person in the house awake. Even the animals are sacked. I am in what is called the Fish Tank Room. It looks like this;

What you cannot tell in the picture is that the beams that you can see stretch over pitch-black water that ghosts have a nasty habit of rising out of whenever you are precariously crossing them. What you cannot hear is the constant dripping of water, and blood from the ceiling. It’s a fantastic room.

Halfway across the beams, the lights snuff out. Not in my game, but in my house. I look out the window, but it’s so late I cannot tell if it is my house (it was an old house and the fuses enjoyed being fickle and blowing out for no reason whatsoever.)

I got my flashlight and ventured to the front door. The streetlight was out, but then again, it had been for weeks, so this didn’t tell me a thing. Our house was set back, away from the street, in its own little alcove of darkness. There was but one entrance to the backyard. The other had been blocked off by fencing for our dogs. The only door from the house to the back was in a roommate’s room, and was permanently locked.

That meant that I had to go through the single gate, and all the way through the pitch-black yard to the fuse box on the far side. I stepped out the front door, and rain fell from the black night sky. The sound of dripping water surrounded me, and my narrow beam of light as I pushed open the broken old back gate. It sagged on its hinges, and scraped along the ground, announcing my presence to anyone, or anything that was in the shadows.

As I walked that long narrow passageway next to the raised foundation of the house, the trees shown darker against the stormy skies. I rounded the house, and above me dangled the phone cord that had been ripped from the side of our house and flung over the electrical wires by someone who had very poor intentions toward the occupants of the house.

Looming above me were the remains of an ancient support system that looked surprisingly like a Torii gate.

As I passed this by and stepped carefully over the moss-covered path, I realized that this was very much like my game. I may as well stepped into Fatal Frame sans the camera obscura. What did I think? How did I react to this?

It was bloody awesome. How much fun is that? I got to basically walk as one of the characters did through a nightmarish landscape with a task or puzzle to solve.

Good times.

There was another situation where a guy was following me at night. He got closer and obviously was up to no good. I dropped the mask and turned to face him looking him dead in the eyes. I have been told I have a terrifying stare without the mask. I didn't say a word, I just stared. He had stopped and didn't know what to do it seemed.

While staring at him without blinking I smiled just a little and said, "You should probably run now,". He didn't run, but he hot-footed it out of there very quickly. I watched him until he was far enough away and I continued on my way.

I usually figure out that I should have been scared of something based on the reactions of others. Especially when they are frightened and I am having to talk them through whatever situation we are finding ourselves in. Later on, I might be asked, “Weren’t you afraid?” To which I have to reply, and that reply usually is something like, I didn’t even think about it, I just wanted to get us out of the circumstances first. I can see why you would ask me though.” That typically is enough to placate the other person. However, if that person knows I am psychopathic it will be brought up with other framing. Usually, they know I can’t feel fear, but it is still really freaky to see.

This is the case with all emotions that I am supposed to feel, but don’t. Fear is the one that stands out the most because it is the one people comment most often about. Or, the one I get in the most trouble because of. If someone knows that I am psychopathic they can have a discussion with me about how I might have been callous toward them, or how I might have overlooked their needs. Aside from correcting the issue these conversations fall by the wayside and don’t really get remembered very easily. The fear issue, however, is the one that gets me chastised the most often, and is also the one that I get reminded by others, often in not the most patient of tones.