My Greatest Fears

In August, I decided to participate in a blogging challenge for the month of September put on by Kait over on Communikait. Well, September turned out way busier than I expected it to be with beginning a new job at a new school, so this challenge got put on the back burner. Now I’m catching up with September 3rd’s topic of revealing your biggest fears.

Oh, man, we can go into some deep stuff when we talk about our fears, can’t we? I think for me, as I’ve gotten older, the number of fears I have has gotten smaller, but the fears that I do have are a lot darker than when I was younger.

I’m hesitant to even write them here, because I’m afraid that putting them out into the world will make them come true. Silly, I know, but most of them are grounded in realistic possibility and are truly terrifying. They are not baseless and could really happen!

Hopefully fears work like when you make wish. If you say what your wish is, it doesn’t come true (or so people say). So in an effort to prevent my fears turning into reality, here are my three greatest fears.

Heights and Small Spaces

My fear of heights and small spaces are the least rational fears I have.

I’ve never been a fan of heights, but in the last few years my fear of heights has increased for no apparent reason. I remember climbing and jumping off a 30 foot cliff into a river when I was 18, but now I would barely be able to climb half that height and look down, much less jump off of it.

Interestingly, I learned on 23andMe that I am more likely than average to be afraid of heights based on my genetics. My fear of heights is a little ironic, because I am fairly tall (I used to be 5’9”, but I think I’ve shrunk a bit, so maybe I’m 5’8” now…)

I’ve always been uncomfortable in small spaces. I’m talking more along the lines of crawl spaces than crowded elevators. I can pinpoint it to my childhood.

There used to be a tube slide at a park I played at frequently. Kids would slide down and then not get off, causing a massive pileup inside the slide as more and more kids unwittingly went down the slide. I despised being stuck inside that slide, especially on a hot summer day. I never understood how other kids could talk and hang out inside that tube. All I could think about was how to get the heck out of there!

Premature Death of Either My Daughter or Me

I am not necessarily afraid to die, but I am afraid of dying before I’m good and old. My grandparents died in their mid-80s, and I believe my great-grandparents did as well, but my mother died at the age of 68. It’s not like she was young, but she wasn’t old either.

I was fortunate to have had her in my life for 34 years, but I feel she should have been around for 15+ more years. Luckily, when she passed away, I was a full-grown woman with an established life. I wasn’t at an age when her death would have been absolutely crushing and have a long-lasting negative impact on my life, such as it would have if I had been in my early 20s or younger.

My biggest fear is that I will die before my daughter has established her identity and has begun a life of her own, and that I won’t be there when she needs a hug and a kiss, a listening ear, or advice only her mother can give. My greatest wish is that I will grow so old that I can do those things not only for my daughter, but for her children as well.

I’m also afraid of my daughter dying before me. This is a fear I know probably all parents have. I will not say I cannot imagine what it would be like to lose my daughter, because I can imagine. And it is ghastly.

Sidenote: I find it incredibly irritating when someone says, “I can’t imagine…” Yes, you can imagine. You just don’t want to because whatever it is you say you can’t imagine happening is terrifying and horrible and you don’t want to go to that place. Fine. Don’t go there. Just don’t say you can’t imagine.

Living an Unfulfilled Life

I’ve always been a dreamer, and sometimes I think I spend too much time in my head dreaming about the future instead of living in the present. Take my dream of writing a book, for instance. If I spent as much time writing the book as I do dreaming about writing the book, I’d have written the darn book already.

A big fear I have is that I will never accomplish the big goals I’ve set for myself: write a book, buy and restore an old lake house, live in a different country, and travel the world. I am fortunate enough to have a job that gives me both the time and money to do these things. I just have to stop dreaming about them and start doing them.

I know that I am not guaranteed a long life (although a psychic palm reader once told me that I will have a long life, so there’s that). As they say, the only things that are certain are death and taxes, so my fear is that I will procrastinate on fulfilling my dreams until it’s too late.

There they are, all spelled out for you. My fears – deep, dark, and not entirely unfounded.

What about you? What are your biggest fears? Let me know in the comments or on Facebook.