Spiders, snakes, the dark, the unknown, heights, large bodies of water, airplanes, public speaking, failure, death, dentists, clowns, change, open spaces, small spaces, and needles. All common things people fear in life. Some are justified, some emerge from past experiences, some are just unexplained. I was recently asked what my biggest fear was. I smash spiders; I've cut off the heads of snakes with my grandparents; I enjoy darkness; the unknown intrigues me; I love heights and can't wait to skydive this summer; I love swimming; airplane rides are really fun and get me to my destination with minimum risk; I'm great at public speaking; failure makes me stronger; I think death is horrible for the people left behind, but death itself doesn't scare me; dentists are nice and make my teeth feel slimy and amazing; clowns are funny; change is good, without it I'd go nuts; open spaces are fun for running; small spaces suck, but I'm not afraid of them; and needles aren't fun, but I've gotten used to getting stuck by them because my veins are tiny.
So what is it that scares me? It's that someone will know everything about me--from my outside appearance, to my thoughts, to my opinions, to my judgements, to my preferences, to my personality--and they won't like me for who I am. That scares me. Each person in my life only knows a little about me because I'm always afraid if they knew everything, they'd reject me or become uninterested. Kyle is probably the exception to this fear because he knows everything about me and that's what makes him love me. My flaws and imperfections are perfect to him.
But he's the minority. The one person. I'm a different person to everyone else. My family knows different things about me than my friends, my friends know different things about me than my coworkers, my coworkers know different things about me than my church friends, etc. I don't know why I have to be so many people. It's almost as if I wear all these masks. I'm afraid that one day I'm going to put on the wrong mask when I come into work, or go to a party, or when I'm at home. I ask myself why it would be so horrible for people to know the things they don't, and the answer is that I don't know. My fear may be irrational, but maybe underneath everything I have a fear of rejection. I've had friends in the past where I let them in and all of them left me out of the blue one day. Either by leaving me for other people or just by not talking to me anymore.
I'm a very confident person and I feel like I have a strong self-esteem, but perhaps I don't. If I was truly confident with myself, then I would be able to tell everyone everything about me, right? That scares me, too. Maybe I'm not as self-confident as I thought. I'm afraid of rejection, of not fitting in, of not being the strong woman I think I am.
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