The Lucky Peak Dam.

Ironically, roughly two weeks after I make a post about "ridiculous things I'm afraid of" something wonderful on the topic happens.

It's Sunday, I'm off work, and Woods and I decide to go up to Idaho city. It's about 1 1/2 hour drive and we're like "Alright! Sunday! Let's do this!". And by "we" I mean "me", and Woods sighed loudly and knew she wasn't getting out of it. What the hell else are you doing, kid, get in my car.

As we passed most of the "Boise" exits, the landscape got more and more sparse, the buildings fell away and we were left with caked brown hills only dotted with sagebrush and dry grasses. Woods looks back and forth at the scenery that's more or less the exact same on both sides of us and says, "It's weird this is where we live, you know? If you took the houses and buildings away, this is what we're left with,"

"This is Nampa and Boise sans the life, yeah?" I muse. It's mid-afternoon, and there isn't a whole lot of traffic. It's too hot to appreciate the landscape, and I absently wonder if that's going to be the motto of my summer, with all the hikes I already have plotted out for the coming months.

"We get to drive past Lucky Peak," I say, nervously laughing. "That's where I saw the Rooster Tail, the whole reason I'm terrified of dams and shower heads and stuff," I add on, off handedly, "Let's hope it's not open today," Why would it be? It only goes maybe once or twice a year. How could it?

The Rooster Tail is as follows; "This water is more than what can be used for power generation, so it comes through the dam's outlet slide gates, or 'flip buckets.' The Bureau of Reclamation and the Army Corps of Engineers is releasing water from the reservoir to make room for expected rain and quickly melting snow. The release creates a huge plume of water, which looks like the tail of the barnyard animal." (source) (also pictures if you've never seen it)

The river comes into view below us and I tense up a little bit knowing there's a dam ahead. I'm mid sentence and begin stuttering. Woods holds up her hand to block my line of vision without hurting my view of the road. I keep talking, we keep moving. I am calmed knowing this is the worst of it; looking at the Boise River dam isn't that big of deal. Looking at Lucky Peak itself is kind of scary, but. The dam is passed. We're done. In an hour we're going to be in Idaho City looking at a rad forest and a rad ass cemetery.

Predictably this isn't the end of the story.

Fate would have it that yes, the gates are open and the Rooster Tail is out and about. I don't know at what point I saw the water, what point I saw that wall, a literal wall obscuring all vision, complete white, but I remember screaming and immediately crying. Maybe "crying" isn't the right word; I remember my eyes being wet and I remember whimpering and shaking. I think I was saying something. I pulled over at a parking area and told the bored looking teenagers managing it that I was just turning around. I see it in the rear view mirror as we drive off and I'm sobbing again.

Suddenly I'm a kid again. Suddenly that wall of water is coming at me from all angles in a shower stall, suddenly every shower head is threatening to fall off and become that wall and encompass me. Suddenly all dams have the potential to do it. Suddenly I am ashamed and terrified and the strangest, overwhelming fear I have is dominating me again.

I mutter I'm sorry over and over as we drive away. Woods says it's fine and I forget she didn't want to come in the first place. We go to the foothills, we find a trail and wander it for a while. Even the creek running through it makes me flinch but I ignore it and it's nice out. Woods talks about band camp. We laugh. We eventually leave and get Taco Bell. I take her home, I go home. Everything feels normal.

My Mom asks what I've been up to and I'm crying again, sobbing about failed plans and the Rooster Tail. I end up in her room, watching tv, can hear her on the phone with my Grandma telling her quietly "Nah, she's okay. . . you know how she's been with it since she was a kid,"

I eventually convince myself to take a shower after taking three over-the-counter sleeping pills and feeling like my body isn't quite in my skin anymore. I feel like jell-o, I feel the way I feel when I've taken an excess of downers, my being floating and moving ahead of my real, chubby, functional body. My spirit has escaped and I'm trying to keep up with it. I flinch and I yelp when I shower, constantly moving and trying to keep my eyes on all the walls. Don't betray me now, bathroom.

I sleep but my dreams didn't involve dams. I faced a fear and I ran away from it, screaming and crying.

Fear is a weird thing, guys. I've said it before and I'll say it again; it dictates practically everything I do. It's rare I get to see the actual source of the fear, the beginning of it. Too many parts of my brain fire off and I wonder why it ended up this way. How the genetics lined up and why I'm like this. It's weird. It's so weird.