The Shark Agenda

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Day 26: Fear

Photo by Mathew MacQuarrie on Unsplash

What scares you a little? What do you feel when scared? How do you react?

Writing an entire post about my fears is not how I want to spend a Sunday but here we are!

I fear death. I fear not existing. It's a fear so deep inside me that I sometimes lay awake at night hyperventilating about the inevitability of dying. I get this tightness in my chest and my whole body goes stiff. Even just typing the words out is triggering me. I try to avoid thinking about it in general. It's something I cannot control so there's no need to expend energy dwelling on it.

Spiders scare me too. They give me the actual creeps. My hair stands on its ends, I get goosebumps and I speed walk to get out of the situation. One time, I was in the car with a friend and I was driving and a spider crawled across my dash and I freaked out and swerved the car into oncoming traffic. So yeah, I'm a mess.

I have an irrational fear of small holes really close together. And literally as I type those words, my skin started itching so that's that on that.

I used to be terrified of heights but I think I've slowly gotten over that over the years. Will I ever get on a roller coaster? Hell no. But am I afraid to go up a ladder? Nope! Progress!

I react to most of my fears with general avoidance. As long as it's out of sight, it's out of mind. When I'm confronted with the objects of my fears, my reactions range from startled to full-on panic attacks. Having fears can be so frustrating and inconvenient, especially for a control freak like me. I could literally be cooking dinner and singing to myself and then my brain goes, "You know what would be GREAT to think about right now? THE COMPLETE AND UTTER LACK OF MEANING IN LIFE BECAUSE WE ALL STOP EXISTING IN THE END."

Thanks, brain.