Silverfish and the Wet Floors

The first thing I remember is the floor.

Not the walls, not the mirror, not even the sound of the dripping faucet—just the floor. Wet. Glossy. Breathing in its own way. A thin film of water stretched across cold tile, catching the dim light like a warning. Even now, I can’t step onto a wet bathroom floor without feeling as though I’m entering hell. Not danger exactly—something worse. A quiet, humid wrongness. The kind that clings and, to this day, as I write these lines, makes my feet huddle in horror.

To me, the wet floor of a bathroom is hell. And to just think about it, purgatory.

It’s not rational, and I’ve stopped trying to make it so.

As a child, I didn’t have the language for it. I only knew that certain spaces felt alive in ways they shouldn’t be. Locker room showers, for instance—those long, echoing corridors of tile and steam. Other kids ran through them barefoot, shouting, laughing, slapping each other’s butts with their wrapped towels. I lingered at the edge, towel wrapped tight, calculating each step like a soldier crossing a minefield. Shower sandals made but a small difference.

I remember one afternoon at a swim club. I must have been eight. The air was thick, almost chewable. I stepped into the communal shower, and my foot slid slightly—not enough to fall, just enough to remind me that the ground was not stable, not trustworthy. Then I saw it: a cockroach near the drain, antennae tasting the air like it owned the place. It didn’t run. It simply froze, as if the wet darkness belonged to it more than to me.

I wanted to die.

Other boys brushed past me, indifferent, their feet inches from the creature. I couldn’t move forward, couldn’t move back. The water kept running, warm and endless, pooling around my ankles. The cockroach shifted, just slightly, and that was enough. I bolted—out of the shower, out of the locker room, still dripping, still half-covered in chlorine and fear.

No one understood why I refused to go back in. I explained nothing.

It got worse before it got better.

At gyms, at clubs, at friends’ houses—anywhere there was a shared bathroom, I felt it creeping back. The humidity. The dim corners. The shower/toilet combined units. The suggestion that something might be watching from the edges. And sometimes, something was.

Silverfish were worse in a different way. Where cockroaches were brazen, almost confrontational, silverfish were secretive—quick flashes of movement along baseboards, like thoughts you didn’t want to think. I once saw one dart out from beneath a damp towel I had just picked up. It vanished before I could fully register it, but that was enough. The rest of the night, I felt as though the room itself had become uncertain, as though reality had loosened its grip.

These creatures, known also as “bichos de humedad”, live in the margins. In moisture, in darkness, in neglect. They thrive where things are left unattended, where clarity dissolves into ambiguity. For a long time, I felt like I was being pulled into their world—into that same damp confusion, where nothing is fully seen and nothing is fully understood.

And yet, my life—my real life—was moving in the opposite direction.

I grew older and prouder, more willing to face my biggest fears. I began trying to leave behind that ambiguity. I wanted structure. Clean lines. Dry floors. Clear thoughts. I worked—deliberately, stubbornly—to build a life defined not by avoidance, but by intention. But fear doesn’t disappear just because you decide it should. It lingers, patient, like something waiting in the corner of a humid room.

So I began to confront my fears in order. Started by booking myself an underwater white shark cage experience. I was in panic, but resolute. Nothing would stop me now.

I faced a few others before going after the most embarrassing and irrational of them all, the one that made me at least partially understand Howie Mandel.

Small steps at first. Standing a little longer in a damp bathroom before retreating. Forcing myself to look, really look, at the corners I used to avoid. Accepting that sometimes there would be a cockroach, or a silverfish, and that their existence did not have to dictate mine.

I even started to study them—not obsessively, but enough to understand. They weren’t malicious. They weren’t waiting for me. They were simply living, adapted perfectly to a world I found unbearable. In a strange way, they felt more honest about it. No illusions, no pretenses. Just survival in darkness and moisture.

Forgiveness came slowly. Very slowly.

Not in a grand, cinematic moment, but in quiet recognitions. The silverfish darting along a wall was not an enemy. It was a reminder—of where I had been, and where I no longer wanted to stay. I didn’t have to love it. But I could let it be. And I could even learn or at least be reminded of that translucid, ambiguous, confusing, parallel world I was leaving behind.

Because in doing so, I could finally let myself move forward.

There is still a big part of me that hesitates greatly at the threshold of a wet, dimly lit bathroom. That part never fully disappear, it is part of who I am and where I am. But now, it is accompanied by something else—something lighter.

I think of butterflies.

Not as opposites, exactly, but as possibilities. Creatures that also begin in hidden, uncomfortable places. That endure transformation in darkness. That emerge—fragile, yes, but unmistakably different—into light, into air, into clarity.

The world of humidity, darkness, and fear still exists and it will remain a part of me. I’ve seen it. I’ve felt it under my feet, cold and uncertain. But I also know now that it is not the whole world. And that through my love for horror movies, I can continue this therapy of somehow facing these and other fears that used to paralyze me and now embolden me.

Just around the corner—sometimes closer than it seems—there is something else waiting.

Dry ground. Clear light. Open space.

The quiet, undeniable truth that I am no longer trapped in the past – and the pride of knowing that I am, therefore I can. I am no fearless, but through courage and with an iron will, I can conquer my deepest (and wettest) fears.