What Scares Us

Last night, I had a dream. I'm not going to go into detail about it, because, as Dennis from Its Always Sunny so eloquently states, 'Dee, other people's dreams are like a stack of photos... if I'm not in them and no one's having sex, I don't give a shit.' So the moral of the dream was someone broke into 'my' car and was waiting for me in the back seat. Now this thought alone doesn't scare me. But the moment I woke up, I had a thought that maybe this dream or nightmare happened as some sort of spiritual warning and I was in some sort of danger.

I was home alone when this happened, at 3 in the morning, in an eerily quiet Wrigleyville neighborhood. I couldn't hear a train, a car, a drunk, a bottle, nothing. No music. No creaking floors or spinning fans or even air conditioners. All I had was a dark, empty, silent apartment, in a dark, empty, silent city, and every time I closed my eyes, I saw somebody waiting for me.

This got me thinking (since I obviously couldn't fall back asleep, and was reminded of this around 2pm today), and I have continued thinking about what truly scares us. I have been known to go on a marathon of question exchanges, and I commonly ask 'what is your biggest fear.' I usually say being alone. In every essence of the word. Sometimes it's when it's dark and scary out. Sometimes it's thinking about being 45 years old and alone. Sometimes it's dying with no one around to care. But I claim that to be my greatest fear. I like it because it's thoughtful and a little deeper than scorpions or bees. Even if I just flat out hate scorpions. I just don't get them, and they're creepy.

But I guess why I kept thinking about this is because I'm not scared of the logical things. I'm not scared of not having enough money, or getting into a car accident, or losing a family member to cancer, or saying goodbye to a friend, or getting fired from my job.

And I'm not scared of being alone, because I don't believe I will be. Confidence can overcome a fear.

I'm not scared of heights. I'm not really scared of drowning. Fire doesn't keep me up at night.

Not even the vast unknown of my life can scare me. The night. The silence. Those things that kept me up last night, those things aren't scary. Those are easily overcome with logic, and maybe a quick trip around the apt with all the lights on.

You know what scares me? My thoughts, and their potential. They're endless potential. The ability of my mind to convince me that I was in danger, even though I was safely under my covers, albeit restless. What else can my mind convince me of without my conscious realizing it? Does my mind have a mind of it's own? How many parts of me are acting on my life? Do other organs do stuff like that? Probably not. Besides my liver just flat out quitting. But other than that, the vast potential of my mind terrifies me. Because apparently, it's not always something I can control.

...and scorpions. seriously wtf. become extinct.

So what scares you?