What I Fear

     AB suggested that DL and I both make posts about what we fear after she made her post about her fears and I thought that was a good idea, so here it goes.

I fear...

• Public speaking. This is a legitimate fear. I get all of the "fear symptoms" while speaking in public: sweaty palms, shaking hands, voice sounding like I can't get enough air, rocking back and forth, butterflies in the stomach. I hate it so much. So so much. It's an irrational fear, but I don't think I will get over it anytime soon. 
• Handshakes. I don't actually fear handshakes, I just really dread them. I have super cold, clammy hands, like a dead person's, and I just feel like whoever shakes hands with me is judging me hardcore and thinking I'm disgusting. Believe me, if I could change my hand consistency, I would. But I can't. 
• People I love dying. I can't help but think about people in my family walking out the door and never coming back again. Not leaving me, but dying. Car accident, that's how is usually imagine it. Because that's one of the most horrible and common ways people die. No warning. Just that phone call and the trip to the hospital and the hoping hoping hoping that by some miracle it's not true, but it is. And there would be no goodbyes, no last words, no time to wrap your head around it. That would be so unbelievably awful.
• Living a pointless life. You know, the kind of life where you work your butt off for a paycheck that you use to pay for the mortgage of the house that's too big that you don't even spend much time in because you're always working and you don't have time for anybody or anything because you have to pay those bills and you have to have more more more because it's just never enough. So then you die and you think, "I just wasted my entire life." My grandad used to say, "People never die wishing they'd worked more." Amen. 
• Not getting enough scholarships to get into a college I want to go to. The one college I've visited is the one I'm almost positive I want to go to, but it's out of state and the tuition is hefty, so I'd have to get enough merit scholarship money to cover at least half of it for me to consider going. So I'm afraid that my SAT scores won't be high enough, or my GPA won't be high enough, or my essay won't be good enough, or I won't have enough extra curricular activities and I won't get enough money and I won't get in and so then I'll have to go to my second choice school which will probably be fine but I'll always have these regrets that if I had just tried harder...
• Being a failure at my job. I want to teach and I think I'll make a good teacher, but I have no way of knowing that for sure and it kind of scares me. The idea that I could be a failure at the one thing I really want to do. 
• People being mad at me. This doesn't happen often (at least, not to my face) but when it does I just feel like complete crap and all I want to do is make the person like me again but I don't know how and that's a terrible feeling. It always works out in the end though. 
• Marrying someone who isn't "the one" and feeling stuck. If I don't find "the one", that's okay because I'll just adopt a bunch of kids and go live in the desert. But what if I think I've found "the one" but then five years into our marriage I realize I don't love him anymore? Like, what if he has no hamartia and yet there's just nothing there? No "chemistry", for lack of a better word. I couldn't get divorced, because there's no real issue; it's not like he's abusive or cheating on me, I just don't love him anymore. I mean, that's got to happen sometimes. I just really hope it never happens to me. 

     But more than any of those things combined, I fear eternity. I don't fear death. That's okay. That's nothing. Even if it's painful, it won't last forever. But eternity does last forever, and I have no freaking clue what that's like and quite frankly, I don't want to know. I just can't imagine anything being good enough to keep me happy forever. I believe in Heaven, but no Heaven I've ever created in my mind seems wonderful enough for me to be content with having to be ME for FOREVER. I'm okay with oblivion. I'm okay with dying and there being nothing on the other side. A dreamless sleep. I don't have to deal with me anymore that way. But if death isn't oblivion, then I DO have to deal with me for forever and that frankly scares the poo out of me. 

     The truth is, I'm lucky to fear what I fear. Most of my fears are quite trivial. I don't have to fear going hungry, or having my house bombed, or going through war. I don't have to fear being abused or bullied. I'm so lucky because that isn't my reality. My reality is that my only "job" is to go to school and get good grades. After that, I come home and chill out and I don't have to think about the things I fear, because they're mostly insignificant. Handshaking, for example. Not a fear, just a little thing I don't enjoy. I'm lucky that I don't have crippling fears that keep me awake at night, fears about whether I'll be alive in the morning. People do have those fears, and I'm so lucky to not be one of them. 

Day 453 Song Recommendation: "On Your Porch" by The Format.

 -SE Wagner

P.S.

I uploaded the wrong trailer yesterday for Old Fashioned, but I added the right one this afternoon, so you can go check it out if you want. I personally liked the trailer I have up now better because it bashes Fifty Shades of Grey and there's no talking, just a montage of film clips and good music.