![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Your fears
Sep. 8th, 2010 10:43 pm( The list )
When I was eleven, during my brief foray into independent study programs, I was assigned to write an essay on a childhood fear. I've always been able to bullshit essays pretty well, but this one stopped me in my tracks. I spent days musing on the subject, and simply could not come up with anything. I was pretty much entirely fearless as a kid. I remember being afraid of the dark a total of one time when I was seven, but that was because I was in New York staying with my aunt, and I think it was mostly homesickness and the unfamiliarity of my surroundings. I had nothing. I ended up writing about my vague dislike for people poking around my eyes. Given that the year before I'd gotten a chunk of rust lodged in my cornea and had my eye wedged open under a bright light while four unsympathetic people bent over me to dig it out, I would label that reasonable caution rather than fear.
For a while in my early teens, I said my biggest fear was being considered normal, and never being noticed. I think I'd amend that to never doing anything of note. I don't want to die before I make a real contribution to the world. That said, you never know what people are going to remember. The most poignant part of Anne Frank's diary is the bit where she hopes someday she'll write something that people everywhere will read. Maybe someday my geek girl calendars will be collectors' items, or that novel I wrote in 2007 will be a surprise smash hit. (I would say that's unlikely, but Twilight is going down in the history of popular literature right now, so. Like I say, you never know.)
I don't know if that's really a fear, though, as much as a goal. I guess maybe I'm afraid I won't make it on my own, and have to go back to relying on others for survival? I've never had the fear that a lot of adults describe, that they'll be alone and unloved forever; I know I'm loved, and while I'm glad I have Mike, I'd be just fine if I weren't in a traditional Relationship.
Really, I'm still pretty damn fearless. And I like myself that way.
When I was eleven, during my brief foray into independent study programs, I was assigned to write an essay on a childhood fear. I've always been able to bullshit essays pretty well, but this one stopped me in my tracks. I spent days musing on the subject, and simply could not come up with anything. I was pretty much entirely fearless as a kid. I remember being afraid of the dark a total of one time when I was seven, but that was because I was in New York staying with my aunt, and I think it was mostly homesickness and the unfamiliarity of my surroundings. I had nothing. I ended up writing about my vague dislike for people poking around my eyes. Given that the year before I'd gotten a chunk of rust lodged in my cornea and had my eye wedged open under a bright light while four unsympathetic people bent over me to dig it out, I would label that reasonable caution rather than fear.
For a while in my early teens, I said my biggest fear was being considered normal, and never being noticed. I think I'd amend that to never doing anything of note. I don't want to die before I make a real contribution to the world. That said, you never know what people are going to remember. The most poignant part of Anne Frank's diary is the bit where she hopes someday she'll write something that people everywhere will read. Maybe someday my geek girl calendars will be collectors' items, or that novel I wrote in 2007 will be a surprise smash hit. (I would say that's unlikely, but Twilight is going down in the history of popular literature right now, so. Like I say, you never know.)
I don't know if that's really a fear, though, as much as a goal. I guess maybe I'm afraid I won't make it on my own, and have to go back to relying on others for survival? I've never had the fear that a lot of adults describe, that they'll be alone and unloved forever; I know I'm loved, and while I'm glad I have Mike, I'd be just fine if I weren't in a traditional Relationship.
Really, I'm still pretty damn fearless. And I like myself that way.
