I WANT to dissociate myself from the troubles besetting my country and—well, never mind. I also know that I have just used a psychological term.
In psychology, dissociation refers to “various experiences from mild detachment from immediate surroundings to more severe detachment from physical and emotional experience. The major characteristic of all dissociative phenomena involves a detachment from reality, rather than a loss of reality as in psychosis (wikipedia).” At least I know I’m not crazy and that I’m wide awake.
Dissociation can be used as a coping mechanism or defense mechanism in seeking to master, minimize or tolerate stress—including boredom or conflict (wikipedia).
Not to mention fear of something. This part is my input and so you don’t have to agree with me. After all, I’m just a poor woman with no property to call her own or a business to boast of. “Basta pobre, bisag tinuod ang gisulti, dili gyod tuohan,” according to an old friend.
There are many types of fears you can search in the internet and indeed there are sites devoted to these fears, some of which need medical treatment and some of which are treated humorously by writers.
The fear I want to write about is not katsaridaphobia or the fear of cockroaches. Blatta orientalis is the scientific name for the Oriental one, which makes cockroaches seem such mild creatures. Just writing the word makes me cringe though. It makes me afraid to go on because the artist who will lay out this page may get mad at me.
“Ma’am, paita sab aning imong topic, oy. Lisod pangitaan og nindot nga illustration or photo or graphics (Your topic makes it hard for me to find a good illustration or photo or graphics),” the artist might say to me.
“Hmm, tas-on na lang nako aron wala nay lugar para graphics and all (I will write a lengthy one so there would be no room for graphics and all),” I might reply.
These creatures of the dark can withstand 2,000 times the radiation levels man can take, and can go without food for one month and one week without water. I like the idea of surviving without food for one month because that means savings, but not as a cockroach.
Why do they seem so proud and why do they have the penchant for appearing when we least expect them, like when we have important guests?
For one, they are very old and for another, they have not evolved much. They are then living fossils! It also means they did not get into food fads or costly makeovers or into strange fashion trends. They simply kept on breeding, using the same old attributes through all generations and scaring damsels like me into distress that irrirtate some people who are not afraid of cockroaches.
Whenever I see one, I yelp and my husband scolds me for being scared, but he praised me after I told him cockroaches are carriers of typhoid fever; the poliomyelitis, which causes polio; and can cause dysentery.
“I like your projected column. It’s an advocacy of something without a name and an awareness project without the propaganda,” he said.
Cockroaches are a marvel of science, and demand our respect as well as apology. This should convince me that next time I see one, I must stop myself from ending its life with a heavy pair of slippers (they never get immune to slippers and I never stop myself).
They first appeared during the Carboniferous period, some 320 million years ago, and will keep on appearing. That’s why they are so difficult to eradicate.
Maybe I am bored. I also forgot I didn’t want to write about katsaridaphobia.