Entomophobia: One of the Many Reason Why I Can't Sleep At Night

Entomophobia, also known as insectophobia, is the fear and/or hatred of insects.
I hate bugs. To me, insects are much more than absolutely annoying, and useless, they are utterly terrifying. Yes, I know from past experience of referring to insects as useless that the primary argument to their usefulness is that they're the main food source for so many animals, but why can't small animals find something else to feed on? I hear vegetarianism is growing popular.
The second sentence of this blog post was an understatement. I loathe and despise everything that even resembles an insect. Including, but not limited to, spiders. Heck, even crabs are somewhat terrifying.
The most simple and straightforward reason for this unrestrained hatred is a typical one: like most people, I consider anything that haunts my nightmares as detestable.
Bugs are horrifying. Everything about them, from the fact that there are probably millions of them around you right now, to the fact that no matter how many you kill, there will be more. Roaches even survive nuclear explosions, no to mention how quickly they reproduce from the lack of humans. After a nuclear explosion, their population increases. Then there is the fact that for every insect we kill, about a thousand more are born. Is it strange to fear anything that reproduces faster than you can kill? If your answer to that question is anything but a variation of the word no, you are some kind of sick lunatic monster, or a CoD fan (probably a mixture of both, seeing as they're so related).
Now, many people believe that I am simply overreacting. But lets go over some things that terrify humans and compare them to insects:

1. Vampires
Now, I know this one is debatable nowadays with the new sparkly attractive vampires we seem to fancy, but I want you to picture Dracula. I want you to picture the most adorable child you can, and picture them locked in a room with a starving Dracula. What was terrifying about him? He sucked your blood. What is more terrifying than something that can only survive by feeding on human blood? Something that survives purely off of human flesh. Well, thank the heavens that such creatures only reside in terrible books, cheesy movies, and HBO shows. Oh wait.... Bed Bugs, Fleas and Ticks all do that. In fact, mosquitoes, the best known of these pests, don't even ingest our blood for themselves. They use are best known bodily fluid in their reproductive cycle. Its almost as if the high pitched buzzing sound we hear when they fly by is their laughter. The little jerks are mocking us.
2. World Domination
One of the reasons everyone seems to think entomophobia is stupid is that insects are tiny. "They're more afraid of you than you are of them." is the most common expression. Well, to people who seem to think that, I'd like to point out that Argentine Ants are possibly taking over the world.
Contrary to popular belief, Argentina's largest export is neither fruit, nor handsome soccer players, its ants. Argentine Ants are only acceptable in Argentina. There, at least, they have some kind of hardship, keeping the population down. However, once they get anywhere outside of their original habitat (i.e. the rest of the world) things get wild. Nowadays, they are found on every continent except Antarctica (presumed to be because of the lack of humans to piss off and terrorize there).
The fact that they are colonizing the rest of the world is not very terrifying. The creepy part is that they're not normal ants. Most ants, treat different anthills as rivals. However, these ants are different, they form what scientists call, a "Global-Mega Colony."
No seriously:  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Argentine_ant#Global_.22mega-colony.22
That means that if you take an ant from China, and an ant from Brazil, instead of tearing each other to bits like normal ants, and even some humans do, they will work together.
But wait, the madness doesn't stop there, this Global-Mega Colony, when coupled with the fact that ants have something known as "collective intelligence" is terrifying. Collective intelligence is an idea that is hard to explain. An example of it is the fact that if you take a dozen ants and put them on a table together, they just walk around in circles until they die of exhaustion. However, if you take a few hundred, they gain the ability to coordinate attacks, and even regulate their own body heat. This means that unlike humans, when ants are put together, their IQ increases... Now, picture that, but with a colony capable of covering about 10,000 km.

Now, knowing all of this, knowing that these ants are quietly planning on taking over while we live our lives, how am I supposed to be able to sleep? They used us to help carry them throughout the world.
Insects are terrifying. And I will not be convinced otherwise. In fact, I'm so horrified by their mere existence, that some form of the word terror is in this post at least five hundred times.

Enjoying Life

One of the most amazing people I know, and also one of my favorites, is Keila Carter. Every conversation I have with her seems to bring me one step closer to understanding life.

Last night, we were talking about coping when she said something that has been running through my mind since. She said not to take life seriously. That idea, no matter how ridiculous it sounds at first, kept me up. I couldn't sleep. What she meant was that you'd only be as worried as you let yourself be. And that idea completely tore up so many of the things that I live by... Surprisingly enough taking things the way life threw them at you, and not trying to control everything, is one of the keys to enjoying life. For me, that was one of those things that I couldn't just be taught, but had to experience in order for it to truly make sense. That doesn't mean that you should just live for yourself and take up Epicureanism. It means that we all need to calm down, and learn that we're not the ones in control, no matter how much we wish that were true. That last sentence is inaccurate actually, most of us already know that, we just need to accept it. Once that happens, our relationships will get better. It'll be less about "having" the person and more about being with them.

There is this song by Queen, and Paul Rodgers that starts out with:

"Lately I've been hard to reach

I've been too long on my own

Everyone has a private world

Where they can be alone"

Those lines are from the song Reaching Out, and they hit home for me. We're too busy being in our private worlds worrying ourselves to death, to let other people in. Heck, half of the time we don't even notice other people.

 Letting people in is getting easier.

Thanks Keila.