Heebie Jeebies

I've been having a case of the heebie jeebies lately.

I don't know why, I can't pin-point a real reason for it, but I've just been expecting to be frightened lately.

I've been expecting to have bad dreams and see scary things in shadows. I've been expecting to turn corners and bump into strangers in unexpected places.

I get this every now and then - usually with years between "episodes", and it's usually shortly after I've seen something that creeps me out... which in this case would probably be some stills from the John Carpenter version of The Thing.

But I can't really blame it on the stimuli, because I'll go for years being able to occasionally look at things like that while having no reaction, and then one day a single photograph will have me so out-of-sorts that I'll be wanting a night light.

When I get into this sort of zone I usually can't even glance in the direction of the horror section at the video store, because any given picture may have my skin crawling for the next few days. It's clearly not the picture itself, but just the theme of the picture - the promise of something unpleasant.

The weird thing is - I don't usually have the bad dreams. I don't usually see the scary shapes in the shadows. I'm expecting them, I'm dreading them - I try to avoid looking at shadows in case I see them... But the shadows are perfectly tame, and my sleep seems devoid of nightmares. When I do bump into strangers in unexpected places, I'm mildly startled, but not frightened.

I'm afraid that I'll be frightened - I'm not actually frightened. I'm afraid I'll see something that will scare me - I'm not actually scared of the things I see.

It's a very odd sensation, this lurking dread that comes from expecting to be scared. And I don't know if it's because the creepy thing I see is the origin of it, or if it's because there's something else going on in the back of my head that's making me feel vulnerable, and the creepy thing is just a trigger.

It doesn't always get me when I'm stressed, so I don't know if I can blame it on stress. I suspect there's something out-of-place that I'm not seeing, and instead of processing it properly I'm just feeling a general sense of "something is not right", which translates on trigger into this phobophobia.

I've been trying to see if I can pick what it is - because then I might be able to address it, but the way I usually tell that something is bothering me (I'm actively avoiding thinking about it), isn't helping. I can't figure out what I'm avoiding.

All I know is that something is amiss - and as a result I'm feeling antsy and skittish. I just wish I knew what it was.