tcepsa | March is Question Month -- Answer 1

"What are you afraid of?"

Hehe, one of the fun things about Livejournal is trying to take answers that could involve a week of writing and still not be fully explored and cram them into a few succinct paragraphs.

I also, when faced with questions like this, find myself torn between posting something true and short but which doesn't really provide anybody with much insight into me (spiders!) and trying to dig deep down into the hidden corners of my soul and drag out the thing that truly frightens me most (which leads to that whole "weeks of writing" thing). So, disclaimer, these are not necessarily my Biggest Fears for a multitude of reasons that I won't go into here for the sake of brevity. But they are big ones.

I'm afraid of invalidation. Especially on a large scale; I'm afraid of being told "you, as a person, are worthless," and messages that convey similar implications.

I'm afraid of being alone. I think the invalidation fear is a result of this fear, because if I'm worthless then who'd want to spend time with me? (Or perhaps they're two sides of the same coin--if I'm worthless then nobody will want to spend time with me. If nobody wants to spend time with me, I must not have that much value.) The kind of aloneness that I'm talking about here is not really related to the proximity of people. I can be completely by myself and not feel lonely, and I can be in a crowd and feel utterly alone. It's more of a mental/emotional loneliness, I think, that I'm talking about.

These may very well be the things I fear most; I've been thinking about some of the other big things that I'm afraid of, and after a (somewhat cursory) examination they can all be connected back to these.