Musings: "The horror..."

Among the various idiosyncrasies (by which I mean manifestations of my ongoing mental illness) that make me who I am, I have to include a genuine phobia of the telephone. I wasn't always this way. I used to have conversations on the phone with people as a child, and into my adolescence and teenaged years. And living far away from my family, as I have since 1996, necessitates the occasional phone catch-up, especially since my mother has email access only a few times a week at work and isn't so great a typist to begin with.

But somewhere along the way, in the past ten years, the phone became a fearsome object for me. Was it during the impoverished grad school days when I would fall behind on bills and spend weeks dodging creditors? Is it because some of the most traumatic memories I have begin with unexpected phone calls? In any case, I have to admit that I'm afraid of it. I'm afraid to answer when it rings; I'm loathe to phone people myself. Friends have grown to accept it. They know the drill. There are countless messages that turn up on our answering machine in the, "Hello? You there? Well, I know you're there, but anyway, this is what I want to talk about..." vein. For a while, I thought this was just a quirky affectation--say, me doing my best Buddy Glass impersonation. But it's not. There's some component of my brain that sees the phone as something to be avoided, an evolutionary impulse on which my well-being defends.

But.
I did phone my mom this morning and talked for an hour.
And I returned a phone message just now that was work related. (Bad luck though--the person was gone for the day, which means I have to call back again on Monday. Rats.)

Still, maybe there's hope for me yet.