I arrived home on Saturday night and felt sane again. I still cannot believe how much that incident affected me. I really felt as if I was losing my mind, even the next day, in the bright sunlight, out of the hotel. I thought I had grown out of a lot of that phobia, but I guess not as much as I thought.
I quarantined EVERYTHING the moment I got home - including the clothes I was wearing, which I stripped off and threw onto the deck with everything else. (Oh, hi, neighbours!) On Sunday I washed what was washable in the machines, kept some quarantined for dry cleaning, and boiled the rest in a big cauldron-like pot, ridiculously, feeling as if I was acting out Macbeth. I also soaked the suitcase in boiling water.
So anyway. Now I'm back. I have a lot of work to do in the next week and a half, including writing my paper for Congress before I leave for my research trip. Since I will have only a couple of days once I get back, before I turn around again to go to Vancouver for that crazy shindig, and will be jetlagged and out of it. Never have I had so thin a conference paper idea - I really have no idea what I'm going to write...my abstract, I see, is ridiculous. I may even have to consider scratching this part of my book project, so little do I feel I have to say at the mo'. God, I hope not - there would go one third of my objects of study!! Let's just hope that my completely open-ended writing process comes up with something, as happened with last year's Congress paper, which I was really happy with (with several months of hindsight).
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3 comments:
Glad you are feeling better and got everything decontaminated when you got home. Don't be too hard on yourself about the phobia thing. Anybody without a phobia of bugs would find that a traumatic experience. It's impressive you dealt with it all so calmly and rationally, much more so than I would have done.
Good luck with the Congress paper! I'm sure you'll come up with something smart in the end.
Bed bugs, ugh. They are a growing problem world wide. Blame us environmentalists for rejecting bleach and hot water washing!
Sorry you had the horrible bedbug experience! Ew. I would have freaked out too.
Also, feel free to ignore this, but a friend of mine had to get over a serious spider phobia (she was moving to Australia, where they have lots of spiders everywhere apparently), and found a short course (maybe 6 sessions?) of cognitive behavioral therapy really helpful. That's only if the phobia is affecting your life enough to make you want to diminish it, of course, but just thought I'd throw in that testimony.
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