TOOAFRAIDTOASK by Steve Gergley

TOOAFRAIDTOASK by Steve Gergley

Posted by u/samuraijake14 – 2 hours ago

Does anyone else have this problem or is it just me?

ok so i know this is going to sound super weird and stuff but please just try to bear with me becuase ive never asked strangers on reddit for advice like this but i swear this is a serious question and im not trolling because this is a real thing that happens to me all the time now and i dont know how to fix it and im too scared to ask my friends or parents about it because of what they might say. Ok so what i wanted to ask is if anyone else gets too scared to poop because they are afraid that a snake will crawl up out of the toilet hole while their sitting there with nothing to protect their bits. im asking because a few days ago i saw a story online (it was on msn or yahoo or someother place that talks about real news, so i think its true) about this woman who was in the bathroom of her house in florida and then she lifted up the toilet lid to do her business but before she sat down she saw a big snake crawling up out of the hole in her toilet where the poop gets flushed away and it turns out that something had happened to the pipes under her house and the snake got in from there and then it crawled all the way up into her toilet from the back. so i guess my question is if anyone else ever sees something like that and gets so scared and cant stop thinking about it to the point that they now cant do even the most normal things in their life like pooping because ever since i read that story i get really scared when i feel the need to poop because what if something like that happens to me? BTW im 14M and i live in northern florida (tallahassee area) so its not like i live right next door to the toilet snake lady, but i do live in the same state so i cant stop thinking that if something so scary like that can happen to a random lady who lives kind of close, then whats stopping something like that from happening to me? now anytime i even think about pooping my mind goes crazy on its own and instantly imagines the most horrible thing that could possibly happen like the other day when i was at my friend terrys house and i needed to go to the bathroom, but then right after i got there and closed the door i saw a mind movie of me sitting on the toilet and getting bitten on the butt by a snake coming up out of the toilet hole and it was really scary because my mind showed me all the horrible details even tho i didnt want it to and even after i tried really hard to think about something else i couldnt and instead i just kept seeing the horrible mind movie of me getting bitten and my body starting to shake and jerk from the poison and me smashing my face against the hard floor and my teeth hitting the tiles really hard and breaking all over the place and it seemed so real that i could almost feel it happening and then in the mind movie i started throwing up uncontrollably and blood was everywhere and in the movie i knew i was dying so i started yelling for my mom because i was so scared and then no matter how hard the real me tried to think of something else, like fortnite or the new slipknot song or that awesome fight with levi from attack on titan, i couldnt stop seeing myself dying horribly and it was so awful to the point that in real life i started crying and i could barely breathe and it was so embarrassing because terry had to call my mom and ask her to come pick me up and even after mom was there i couldnt stop my body from shaking so i just spent the rest of the day in bed and i didnt go to school the next day. i only ask these things because that day was one of the worst in my entire life and im shaking right now just thinking about it but a similar thing happens now every time i have to poop and i dont know what to do or how to make it go away. i know this post has been rambling on for a while and im sorry about that but i just get so incredibly scared sometimes about all the awful stuff in the news and about all the terrible things that could happen to me and my friends and family and i cant stop wondering why everyone is always arguing so much about stuff that seems really obvious like how the other day when my english teacher mrs collins told the class that men and women are exactly the same in every single way, but how is that even possible when girls have lady bits and guys have dongs and girls can get pregnant and guys cant? literally everyone already knows that stuff so why would she even say something that everyone already knows is wrong? so i guess my real question is just why is everything in the world so confusing and scary? also any tips re: my pooping dilemma would be cool thx


Steve Gergley is the author of The Great Atlantic Highway & Other Stories (Malarkey Books '24), Skyscraper (West Vine Press '23), and A Quick Primer on Wallowing in Despair (Leftover Books '22). His short fiction has appeared or is forthcoming in X-R-A-Y Literary Magazine, Pithead Chapel, Maudlin House, Gone Lawn, Rejection Letters, New World Writing, and others. In addition to writing fiction, he has composed and recorded five albums of original music. He tweets @GergleySteve. His fiction can be found here.

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