Mandi Brehm

1) I am deathly, deathly, deathly afraid of mirrors in dark rooms. I'm always afraid that my reflection will change into something evil. I have a mirror on the back of my door that I can see myself in when I'm laying in bed. It practically gives me heart attacks every night. I do everything I can to avoid looking in it. Ever.

2) In the morning before school, I'm usually alone in the house by the time I'm blow drying my hair. If my stepmom is home, I will turn the hairdryer on high. If she's not and I'm alone, I won't turn it on high even if I'm running late and it takes twice as long to dry (I walk to school and it's 16 degrees- my hair MUST be dry or my ears will freeze) because when it's on low I can still hear around me in case something creaks and one of the grotesque, horrifying monsters from my early childhood slithers around the corner to strangle me. I've been trying to wean myself of this one, but this morning I turned the hairdryer on high while I was alone and couldn't even look in the mirror for fear of something appearing behind me to kill me.

3) Being hit by a car. This one may not be so irrational because I walk a fairly busy road coming home from school crowded with high school aged drivers and I did get hit by a car three days ago, but since then it's been a complete paranoia. Every time I step into the road my heart thumps hard and I have fleeting visualizations of my body lying broken in front of a piece of shit car while pot-smoking seventeen year olds wander foggily out to see if I'm okay.