Sensing a Mouse, Essay Example

Two years ago I had an encounter with a mouse in my apartment.  Several times during the night, I would lay awake watching movies or playing video games.  The room would mostly be dark.  At the time, I was living in North Carolina, so the weather was always warm.  I had food stashed around the room, which made for quite the buffet for one single mouse.  The first time that I encountered the rodent, I gave a short gasp and the mouse ran back to his hiding place behind the wall.  Since that first occurrence, every time I spotted the mouse it became easier to handle and much less shocking.  However, I finally devised a plan to capture the mouse inside a trash bag and carry the bag outside to the dumpster with the trapped mouse inside.  I was finally rid of the unwelcome guest in my apartment, but he actually has never left my memory.

To this day, whenever I stay awake in the early hours of the night or have been working on limited hours of sleep, I see things moving in my peripheral vision.  I always think that a mouse has just run across the floor out of the corner of my eye.  Sometimes I even think that the mouse has come up out of the heater and then climbed back in immediately when my eyes turn directly to the heater.  Unfortunately, I know that this is not correct.  I have had my apartment disinfected, sprayed and I have electronic pest devices that are supposed to keep rodents and insects from being present in the apartment.  Also, the apartment is a different one from my experience with the mouse in North Carolina.  I am living in a completely different apartment complex in a completely different state.  Logically, this would show that it is doubtful that I am encountering the same situation as I had in North Carolina.  Furthermore, I never actually see any mouse running across the floor.  Everything occurs in my peripheral vision.  I am always trying to catch a glimpse of a fictitious mouse that is caused by my own incorrect perceptions.

Based on my incorrect experiences over the last year and a half, I do not believe that I can actually trust my own senses when these situations occur.  There are times now where I can be sitting in my apartment watching TV and literally see a shadow move and do not trust that I have seen this movement.  I immediately dismiss these movements now because I have trained myself to become immune to the shock of seeing an imaginary mouse running across the floor in my peripheral vision.  Therefore, it is clear that I can no longer trust me senses because of these experiences, and whenever I experience fatigue or have electronics on late at night, I intentionally have to avoid trusting my peripheral eye sight.  I suppose that a part of me would like to trust my senses, which would suggest the reasons why I have taken steps to eliminate any potential pests from my home.  However, I see these false mice running across my peripherals far too often, and I can no longer trust their appearances no matter how much I rely on my eye sight.

In my situation, self-deception is the reason that I am forced to distrust my own eye sight.  My peripheral vision is replicating a previous experience that shocked me multiple times roughly two years ago.  Now, this shocking event is ingrained in my memory and my senses are attempting to deceive my reality.  I not only am being self-deceived but also must react through self-deception to force my conscious reality not to justify these false peripheral visions.  It is a difficult situation any time an individual is forced not to trust his or her own senses.  Clearly in my situation, the shock of these events are the true causes for me distrusting my own eye sight.