my greatest fear

i like to think of myself as quite fearless. sometimes with a little too much swagger and almost no inhibition.

when people would say they have nightmares of their loved ones passing, i would do a private snigger - not that i feel these people are wimpish or anything, but that this fear i'd already have gotten over. yes, it's almost inhuman: i'm quite ready to face the loss of any loved one... it's true, i might tear a little, considering how final that loss could be - but in the Lord's lovely name i'm ready to commit their souls into His faithful arms.

guess you could call that "dealing with" loss rather than fearlessness, but neither am i very bothered by the fact that i could die any second. true, i'd not have the luxury of a last-gasp confession, but really, i believe God already has that covered. i'm more or less quite ready to be judged, in a sense (although more time would be good, definitely!). it seems death doesn't stump me much eh?

what about losing a limb? or sight? or all my material comforts? well... at the most these inconveniences would take a couple of months to get used to. i'm actually quite resigned to the fact that i will definitely need a wheelchair in old age, and my eyes will definitely go before i die. not that i don't do anything to prevent these inevitabilities, but part of that preparation involves imagining life like that and beginning to get used to it in bits - now. even accidental castration doesn't really faze me. honest.

looking through typical lists of fears, we see some usual suspects: arthropods; LOTS of bugs in a claustrophobic setting, maybe? eating a cockroach is quite icky to me... but if given a fear factor challenge, i believe i can down a few buckets of the vermin i hate most (puking notwithstanding). heights (think walking the parapet on a 100 storey building) would give me lots of jitters; but i actually can't wait to go bungee jumping! how about getting lost? in a dark haunted mansion? whew... that would be quite scary i'm sure... but you know, i do wanna talk to spirits - they are instant proof of the existence of an afterlife. getting lost in a jungle might be more horrifying. being eaten by some animal must be excruciating pain! how about this... getting hanged, drawn, and quartered? how much pain can i take before i will accede to any request? there is an amount of courage involved in this... although it is more tempered against endurance rather than raw fear (fear of more pain is really a way of saying you can't endure more pain, right?), though i reckon the sight of an iron maiden or the pyramid chair would send very pronounced chills down my spine...

and still, those aren't my greatest fears. this is:

i'm most afraid that one day i would discover that everyone i know is really pretending to be nice to me. that i am sealed within an airtight seal of pretence with completely no means of telling if what i believe about anyone really has any truth to it. that somehow a well-conceived conspiracy to keep me in the dark about how people really feel about me had spontaneously spawned, so that what ever i know about anyone's opinion is really false knowledge. a conjuration of deception so elaborately conceived, a web of impenetrable lies so finely spun, that my social reality is completely non-contingent upon any of my intellect. i cannot understand anyone's real feelings; my skills of interpretation themselves were products of this falsification. i am completely powerless and vulnerable emotionally. my impressions of myself from others' words lie completely shattered and meaningless. my purpose a farcical concoction. my life... utterly baseless.

that is my greatest fear. it's like some conspiracy-phobia, but it remains distinctly possible in small amounts. every time i see some secret look, a nuanced expression, hinted at someone else but myself, about myself... the fear grips me. am i being analysed outside of my awareness? it's probably the worst aspect of my (non-DSM diagnosed) OCD - i'm not obsessed about what others think about me per se, just paranoid that the above-described complete shut-out could exist. what if mum really thinks i'm just wacko? what if my friends really think i'm just full of it? what if that stranger already knows how contrived i am but is pretending not to know me? what if they are all pretending to be who they are to me - and i have no way to tell?

hmm. maybe that isn't that scary after all - now that i've typed it all out. i think i may be able to face that with some courage... and God's presence.