Even weeks later, I couldn’t walk past a stranger’s mattress without feeling the hair on the back of my neck rise. Hotel rooms became a gauntlet; every creak of the floor, every faint rustle in the HVAC system, sent my mind spiraling into micro-maps of unseen invaders. I would run my hands over the sheets, inspect every seam, lift the mattress corners like a detective searching for evidence that might no longer exist.
The paranoia wasn’t loud—it was quiet, a persistent hum beneath thought, like static in the air you can’t quite remove.
Friends began to notice. “You’re overreacting,” one said as I unpacked in their guest room, carefully leaving my luggage in the bathroom while I sanitized the counters. I smiled and nodded, but my body remained in rebellion. My arms itched at night, a phantom echo of the welts that had once carved a language into my skin.
I realized the fear had moved in without invitation; it wasn’t about insects anymore, it was about trust. Trust in a space, in walls, in the invisible histories embedded in every surface.
Even at home, the lesson lingered. I started rotating mattresses, vacuuming under furniture obsessively, washing sheets at industrial temperatures, inspecting packages, inspecting clothes. My body was scanning constantly, translating subtle environmental cues into a language my mind could finally respect.
A dropped sock on the floor could no longer be innocent; a creaking floorboard might be telling me something I didn’t want to hear.
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