Problem Attic. Insert witty tagline here.

Insecurity

Nathan’s post on Fear struck a few chords with me. This is how I fear…

This is *not* a “cry-for-help� post, or anything like that. I am not digging for certain types of comments. Keep it real =).

Anyway, it struck a couple of chords for me when Nathan said:

I’m afraid
of losing what I value, what I’ve worked for
of hurting others, seeing them be hurt
of being completely open to people, perhaps because of a fear
of not being loved, being lonely

It’s almost ironic that our true fears — our deep fears — are the ones that are so hard to share, when sharing them could potentially be the quickest way to eliminate them. I say “almost ironic,â€? and “potentiallyâ€? because the reason we don’t speak these fears out is the risk that they could be confirmed.

My deepest, darkest fear is, in one word, loneliness. What I really mean by that is that I’m sometimes horribly afraid that people just put up with me — that nobody would really mind if I just disappeared. In a book by Adrian Plass, Stress Family Robinson, I came totally face-to-face with how I felt:

On those days I feel like a shapeless piece of rubbish, and I know that no one really likes me. They’re just pretending, and I never want to see any of them ever again.

I don’t always feel like that; it’s a reasonably rare mood thankfully. But when I do, it’s a horrible thing. The worst thing about it is that there’s not really any good way to deal with it. I can’t just go ask people if I’m being stupid — what if they tell me I’m right? When I’m in a normal mood (as in, most of the time) I could ask, but that’s not when I need to ask. Yay for catch-22s. Anyway, normally when it happens I go extreme introvert — I tend to stay home and mope. In another catch-22 fit of irony, this is exactly the opposite of the best way to deal with it — inevitably I’m snapped out of it by hanging out with friends, who, if they don’t actually enjoy my company, are damn good at faking it. The perfect cure for wondering if you’re really accepted and wanted is, uh, feeling genuinely accepted and wanted.

I think part of the reason I’m so sure I need to get married sometime (no celibacy for me) is that marriage is a sort of guarantee that someone likes me, enough to sign their life away on a bit of paper for me. Not a good reason, and one that I do my best to minimise, but one that’s there nonetheless.

So. That’s my deepest fear. What are yours?