Complex Numbers

Fear Itself

With Halloween coming up, I got to thinking today: What would truly frighten me?

Partly, this is because of a Cracked article that covers a topic I've been talking about:

http://www.cracked.com/personal-experiences-2580-6-reasons-sleep-paralysis-most-...

(Cracked used to be better. Now they mostly suck, but they do occasionally have decent articles.)

While sleep paralysis is certainly terrifying at the time it happens, I don't lie awake at night dreading it, it barely affects the rest of my life, and I wouldn't call it the scariest thing that's ever happened to me. But when thinking about what the scariest thing that's ever happened to me might be, my brain draws blanks. Possibly this is out of self-preservation - I don't want to remember something that scared the living shit out of me (note: I've never been frightened to that literal degree).

Some people are afraid of spiders or snakes. Spiders, snakes, large insects, wasps, and so on certainly startle me, but once I get over the initial WTF, they're all actually pretty cool. Not that I'd want to pet them or anything, but they're fascinating.

Or take the clown phobia thing. For some people, coulrophobia is a real thing. I like to joke about it, not as a way of facing my (nonexistent) fear of clowns, but just because it's inherently funny. I probably shouldn't joke about it because it's mean, but hey, I am what I am. I even spent a night in the infamous, haunted Clown Motel in Tonopah, Nevada   once, and the only scary part of that was that it was 17 degrees F outside and it took me an hour to figure out how to make the room heater work.

I'm not afraid of death. I've been too close to it too many times to fear it. I'm certainly not excited about the prospect, but it's inevitable, so I don't worry about it. I'm kinda terrified of dementia, though; both my parents died from it after long, slow declines and I do not want to go through that or put my friends through it (not a genetic issue; they were my adoptive parents).

And now I have to face a harsh truth: even if I did know what I was most scared of, I'd be reluctant to write it down or tell anyone about it. Not because writing would make it so; that's superstitious hogwash. But people suck, and someone would find a way to use it against me. Like if I said "there is nothing in the world I fear more than ducks," I'd get spammed with Geico ads.   (Ducks are awesome, by the way. Also inherently funny. I've said before that if you're not sure how to make something funny, just throw in a duck.)

So I guess this entry is going to end unresolved. You don't get to know my biggest fear. On the other hand, I'm not sure what it could be, either.