Arjun Khemani

Okay, this may sound weird and very strange but I’m sort of afraid of peaches.

All of this started when I was on my morning run like last week, and completely out of nowhere, my mind sent me a signal of me eating a peach. Biting it wholly. And just the sensation was making me so uncomfortable! The furry, fuzzy and ambiguous skin of the peach was making me ticklish and providing a feeling which is just indescribable but very unpleasant. The funny thing is, I wasn’t even near a peach that morning, nowhere near the market or anything or even any peach-related structure or vision. I think just out of intuitional nowhere did I get a peach-ish sensation. And I kind of understood there and then that there was something weird about my psychology with a peach.

And surprise, surprise! I got offered to have a peach yesterday. When I saw the surface of the peach, my fear and that fuzzy sensation crept up again. I felt so uncomfortable. But I decided that I was going to have this peach no matter what. I had to feel my fear and eat it! So I did. Every step of the way was so hard. Especially the skin, the fruit was fine and normal, but the first step—the skin of the peach was very, very hard to eat. But eventually I completed the whole peach, and I felt okay, not so great and proud of myself after conquering my fear as I usually would have been. Because it’s just a peach and there’s nothing to be afraid of! But whenever I get near a peachy surface, it gets really, really scary.

So, as usual with anything that happens with me, I searched for the problem on the internet, hoping to find answers of why I was afraid of peaches. I found a video on YouTube of a man who is afraid of peaches. It was brutal to watch him suffer when he saw the peaches but apparently hilarious for many people. You can watch the video here (it’s a good one, but will make you feel some pity for the man too). And after some more “research” I discovered the scientific name of my phobia. Apparently it’s called “haptodysphoria” which is “An odd, disagreeable sensation felt by certain people when handling peaches, velvet or other fuzzy surfaces.”
Just to be clear, I only have a fear of peaches. So I found this out, but apparently there is not much talk on this subject, maybe because many people aren’t afraid of peaches.

My fear of peaches is so high, that I don’t even have to see or feel them, just by memory can I remember the texture of a peach and it gives me a pretty “disagreeable sensation”, just like how kids can be scared of ghosts, without ever actually seeing a ghost, just the virtual feeling of a ghost makes them afraid.

Anyway, this was it, I’m sort of afraid of peaches, and I’m trying to eliminate that fear, by forcing myself to eat a peach a day at least till the season is here.

The internet is an amazing place to find relatable people from across the world, so if you have something like this kind of a fear with peaches, let’s talk!