For me, it’s disappearing. That someday something will happen to me and no one will ever know what it was and where I am. That I will become one of those mysteries you see online and on TV shows. Whenever I think about it I feel nothing but dread.
Change. Particularly the kind I can’t deal with.
The past year or two in the online landscape has been turbulent and has shown me that I fall back to the familiar as a coping mechanism. And if that familiar should be unavailable… Ouch. ;_;
If you can’t control the change, why would you treat yourself as if it’s your fault? Change is inevitable. Learn to be at peace with yourself and exterior changes won’t affect how you feel.
I would suggest a few books for you if you’re interested.
Humanity. I know it’s kind of self-defeating or something, but humanity just scares the shit out of me.
You aren’t stuck in traffic, you are traffic.
Your comment makes it seem as if you exist outside of humanity. Unless you’re an alien or a robot, be the change you want to see.
I love that saying. And I’ve known that for a long time.
Dental pain. Experienced it once and that was enough to give me lifetime nightmares. Absolute horror!
Dental procedures helped me understand that most of us would quickly buckle under torture
Oh fuck yes. I had a removed wisdom tooth get infected, and the dentist said “due to all the pus, the anesthesic won’t work as well, but don’t worry, we’ll go as fast as possible”.
It’s a phrase that features frequently in my nightmares.
That and the “You’ll feel some pressure” lie.
Yeah, no. I know how pressure feels and it is not that!
I am female therefore many medical procedures that should absolutely use some kind of anesthesia, do not because “it’ll be over in a pinch” “it’s mild discomfort” etc. IUD insertion is a big fear of mine.
Fwiw, my IUD track record is 1 easy insertion, 1 easy removal, 1 “that wasn’t fun” removal and 1 “maybe giving birth would be preferable” insertion.
Your mileage may vary.
I was in this crystal clear cliffside cove and could see in front of me maybe 10 m or so but the Rock only went out about 5 and then just plunged into the abyss. and after exploring the coastline I swim out about 10 ft past the rocks and realized that I could see nothing but the deepest blue I’d ever seen.
literally anything could be just a few body lengths away watching me were sensing me, it was almost overwhelming.
I felt this visceral terror, that I’ve felt before in the middle of reading a Lovecraft story.
very much looking into the eye of something unknowable.
Oh fuck no! Dark water is a big fear of mine. I like swimming, scuba diving, snorkeling BUT those dark patches in the water make me truly feel paralyzed and electrified at the same time brbrbrbr. One time I went to the Yucatan penninsula to swim in a couple of cenotes and boy did it make my body shiver! Let alone the meaning of cenotes in mayan cosmogony and what not but the pure sheer terror that that black water gave me was like nothing else.
I understand thalassophobia. The deep is scary. Funny thing is, though, I can handle being on a ship or flying over water, even though I think about how far down it might be.
yep, I’m good with either of those. and I love swimming far out as long as the bottom is still there.
It’s once the the Earth falls away that I don’t want to be there.
Oh shit, just reading about this scares me. It must have been so terrifying, not knowing what’s in the deep water
beaches are usually sandy or have detritus floating, but this was just stark clear, perfect blue getting deeper and deeper as it devoured the light.
Do you recall which Lovecraft story?
mountains of madness.
I had similar chills with other Lovecraft stories, but then my roommate in college told me that the first time he read mountain of madness he had like a mini breakdown because it was so terrifying, and I hadn’t read that story yet.
and the way he describes the immensity of surreal psychotic landscape is pretty terrifying.
I actually read through the story like three or four times in a week to feel the chill more than once.
I haven’t reached that one yet, but I’m close. I really enjoyed A Colour Out of Space, The Dunwich Horror, Rats in the Walls, The Temple, Call of Cthulhu, and the very beginning of The Festival, when he describes wandering along the seaside road toward the distant twinkling lights of a wintery village. The opening pages of that book are beautiful.
That’s great.
The gothic beauty of his writing is part of what’s so deceptive about his world building, he can seamlessly lull the reader into terror through hints and connotations even within beautiful descriptions until all of a sudden you’re mired in the psychic clutches of lunatic behemoths.
have fun, do you have his collected works?
I actually don’t remember the festival.
I have the collected works ready to read but haven’t restarted it yet.
I have this one here. It’s huge and leatherbound. Unfortunately it’s missing several of his less popular ones. The Hound is one I’d like to read, but it isn’t included in this volume.
oh awesome, that looks great.
I’m not sure if you’re aware, but there are many websites that have his complete works listed online for free.
here’s the hound:
Grey aliens. Yep, I know they’re almost certainly not real. They freak me the frack out. It’s undoubtedly all the UFO stuff I read as a kid about abductions and such. A very petite friend once threatened to dress up as one in a realistic costume to scare me in the night. I begged her not to for her personal safety: I’m certain I would not react in a safe or rational way.
Being alone at night creeps me out because of this. Driving alone in a remote, low population locale? Horrifying.
Nevertheless, I still read up on stories and other media about the paranormal. Why am I like this? No idea.
It hasn’t ruined my life or anything. I’ve spent time alone far away from people, when I had to. I can go places at night. It’s just something that creeps into my mind sometimes. I function as a grown ass man, but I still get the creeps about it when I’m alone. I didn’t know that I’ll ever completely shake it.
Statistical chances of being killed by grey aliens based on current statistics: 0%.
Statistical chance of colorectal cancer: 4%
You should definitely never ever watch The Fourth Kind.
Too late, unfortunately.
Almost certainly not real… :)
I think there is an extreamly high probability they are real, considering it’s been millions of eye witness reports by now.
I guess it’s easier to assume every single one of those are just wrong. But if even one of them is right, we have visitors.
I don’t even understand why people find it so difficult to believe. I keep hearing “yeah they can’t travel here because distance”, as if humans somehow has all the knowledge about space travel despite hardly even understanding how to get to the moon. :)
Actually we even forgot how to get to the moon. That’s how much we care about space travel. Yet we are experts at it, somehow. :)
It’s dumb, which is why I assume it has to do with psychological safety mechanisms and that’s why people can’t think rationally about this.
Yeah it’s other people who lack rationality
Not one shred of physical evidence exists to support the hypothesis that earth has been visited by intelligent extraterrestrial life. It’s all fairy tales.
BTW, the nearest neighboring star is 4.25 light years away. You might want to marinate on that.
Oh shit, humans don’t know about something so it can’t exist. :)
You go ahead and wait for your evidence, bud. Will be a while.
LOL. So you believe in bullshit that people claim to have witnessed? How many people claim to have been spoken to by some magic daddy in the sky?
Everything. Everything scares me. If I stop and think about anything in particular, I slowly realize how frightening that thing really is.
Cat. Sits with its ass on your face while you sleep.
Dog. Eats its own vomit and greets others by sniffing their ass, then tries to lick you.
shivers
I have lived with cats, none has ever sat on my face.
There, there… I’m sure some cat will sit on your face someday.
Getting old. Because it’s like old people are just ignored. Nobody thinks they are good looking or interesting and they are mostly just tolerated, not appreciated.
That in combination with body starting to break down is not a great feeling.
I don’t know. Most people I work with and know think the elderly are fascinating since they have so many stories and some experience to learn from. My next door neighbor is in his 80s and I love chatting with him and his wife.
Yeah but you are the exception, a bit wiser and emotionally mature than most. :)
And its because of this real lack of quality care for the elderly (outside of the wealthy elderly) that I workout and eat right as much as I can. I probably won’t be able to afford a good retirement home so I need to stay as health and fit as I can for as long as I can.
I do the same. Exercise, eat healthy and sleep properly. Once the body starts to get real problems, fun is over…
When you get old, there are often other old people to hang out with and they mostly find each other interesting and appreciate them. You’ll be ok and you’ll think young people are naive and you’ll laugh at their obsession with superficial things. Medical issues are real. Take care of your back, knees, and teeth.
Yeah perhaps. And good advice about health for sure.
That I don’t know that my memories are true, or that I might just suddenly experience eternal suffering.
Yes, this! Also, I have a fear of that I could have just appeared in a simulation, with all of my memories preloaded. It feels so eerie not being able to know if I appeared right this second, or if we’re in a simulation or not.
Actually, the probabilities that we’re in a simulation seem quite high. Imagine a universe, where there are 10 technologically advanced enough civilizations that start simulations. But why would the start just one simulation? Why not millions of them? And then the people inside said simulations also start them. So all-in-all, there are billions of simulations. It would be more probable that we’re in one of them, rather than that we’re in a real universe.
Heights, depths; but not consistently.
After considerable reflection, I realised that a lack of a margin for error is what truly terrifies me.
Intolerance.
Aka, the lack of willingness to understand one another — I mean, the ability to discuss and work together toward a common goal, even with people we (deeply) disagree with — and the hostility towards whatever dares being/liking/talking/thinking different.
This is a not only a sad dead-end, imho this is also the very end of any society and of any civilization when the only other persons we can tolerate around us are exact copies of ourselves. People behaving, dressing, talking and thinking exactly like we do — or like we want them to.
This frightens me way much than anything else because I see no way to escape it and, even more terrifying to me, I see no place anywhere where one could escape it. Intolerance is growing everywhere, and it’s growing fast.
The idea of living as if my life hadn’t really started yet and then one day realizing I’m old and I wasted my life.
There is no changing the future or past actions. The only time you can change anything is this very moment. If you focus on what you may or may not have tomorrow, you aren’t living today.
Being born. Don’t want to make that mistake again.
If it’s any comfort, it rarely happens.
My temper
Having to work for another 20 years.
Look at the millionaire that only has to work 20 more years
ooh. don’t make me think about that. If its even only 20.
Checks calendar, “oh shit.”
Haha only 20?
I have another 40 :(
My biggest fear is something happening to my kids. If something happened to them my hair would turn white, I would curl up in a ball and die.
Or something happening to my wife (who I’ve been in a relationship with more than half my life now). This is about the only thing for me. I’ve come to gripes with my own mortality but even I’ll admit it would be hard to move on from the loss of a close loved one. Grief is just difficult.
