Loss

I followed Edward out of the building today, keeping a safe distance. I didn't expect him to turn and see me; I was more worried about everyone else in the building. As Edward left, he picked something up off the ground-- it looked like some kind of doll. I watched him exit the door, but when I followed him out, he was nowhere in sight.

On the way home, I remembered the door in the bakery that I felt an odd compulsion to avoid. Here, we had one of my own students entering a door and disappearing. Maybe my subconscious is developing a fear of doors?

The phobia is an interesting mental device. Usually, some earlier event, traumatic or not, sparks them within us, causing our minds to beg us to avoid a certain object or phenomenon at all costs. Even as we grow older, knowing deep within that this fear is completely irrational, even as we get over the actual fear itself, we can't let ourselves near that phenomenon. The cognitive dissonance gives us more problems in the end than we even remotely had in the beginning. The mind knows all this, yet the phobia persists, resulting in an interesting paradox speaking volumes for the stubbornness of the human mind.

Or maybe the paradox speaks volumes for our mind's attempts to prepare us for the beast it expects around the corner.