Cockroaches... YUCK!

Fucking cockroaches. I hate them. I absolutely, totally detest cockroaches. If you know me, you'll know that there's nothing else that I would describe with the word 'hate'. Contempt, derision, at most dislike. But cockroaches fill me with this loathing and disgust so absolute and final that I cannot imagine something else that can define the word 'hate'. There's nothing else like the pure fury and urge to kill that fills my body whenever I catch a glimpse of this horrible animal.

I also have a phobia of them. In other words, I'm scared shitless of this disgusting brown insect. My heart goes pounding and the adrenaline starts pumping everytime I catch a glimpse of a cockroach scurrying across the floor or a wall towards the nearest dark corner, feelers waving left and right like two disgusting filthy hairs. I actually feel the onset of nausea and an unnatural urge to run whenever I see one. It's ludicrous the amount of terror this little thing creates in me. And I mean it: Pure, abject terror. To put it into context, this is from a person that loves roller coasters and extreme sports. I'm not afraid of most insects(unless they're dangerous), and I'd readily pick one up if I'm sure it doesn't sting or bite. I've picked up giant foot-long millipedes and let them walk on my forearm, I've played with tame pythons and grass snakes, I've caught ferocious-looking(but docile) rhinoceros beetles to scare girls and young cousins, I'm not afraid of snakes as long as they're safe, I'm not afraid of monkeys, strange dogs, birds, rodents, frogs. I actually have an affection for spiders, even if they're the size of my palm and hairy.

But a cockroach... Oh, there would be nothing as physically terrifying to me as a cockroach that was allowed to touch my skin. But it's nothing compared to the hate I have for it. As much as it fills me with uncontrollable fear and nauseating disgust, it pales in comparison to the fury and hatred it generates whenever I catch one at the corner of my eye. There has not been one cockroach that I have seen(in my living spaces) that has been allowed to continue living. Every one that I see generates an unwilling disgust in me, then my body sprints towards the nearest newspaper, rolls it up and smacks again and again at the offending cockroach until I'm sure it's dead. To understand the extent of my phobia, I don't even like to be holding the newspaper when it's touching the cockroach, like when I'm picking it up to throw away, or when I smash down on it. I once smashed one so hard that it's juices burst out the rear of it's abdomen and spattered the wall. I almost vomited. But it gave me immense satisfaction to know that it was, in fact, dead.

My disgust for cockroaches come from the knowledge that they're absolutely filthy things that carry disease. I know that it's a disproportionately large amount of fear and hate to carry, and I can't explain it. After all, rats are dirty, but I have no compunction touching a lab rat, for instance, if you guarantee that it's clean. But give me a lab-reared, sterile, spotlessly clean cockroach and I would still have that same horror and disgust and urge to grab something to kill it. I can't not equate cockroaches with unbearable filth, rot and disease.

What made me write this post? A huge specimen was crawling on my table just now and happened to crawl under a plastic bag just as I noticed it. Without even thinking, my hand smashed down on the plastic bag hard, making the thing spurt juices and roll over, twitching. I felt such immense satisfaction that I killed it, so immense that it blanketed my fear of the thing.

As I wiped the thing into the plastic bag and cleaned my table, I saw that it wasn't dead yet and was beginning to crawl out of the plastic bag(not surprising, they're amazingly resilient, and even after chopping off the head, it only dies because of starvation), so I laid the plastic bag on the marble floor, took a 500g metal weight and smacked down hard with a 'chang!' sound on the bag as it met the hard floor. I felt like a fantasy hero slaying an orc: Spent and resigned to killing the fucking creatures, but sick of the duty nevertheless. I will rid myself of this disproportionate phobia one day, so that I can finally say with a clear conscience and mind that I fear nothing and I hate nothing.