HOME | DD

Description
The way I see it, we all have fears. When I say that, I don't just mean things that scare us like spiders and zombies, but rather things that dwell in the less visible and completely intangible realm of our minds. Today I'd like to express what scares me in that way.
To begin, I will explain a dream I have had since I was very young, repeating often and seemingly randomly. As the nightmare begins, I open my eyes to a vast expanse of white, stretching as far as I can see. There is no horizon, there is no sunlight, there is nothing at all to tell where the ground ends and the sky begins. this is true emptiness. I am completely alone in a vast nothingness which both spans forever and feels confining. slowly I begin to realize there must be walls, in fact I can easily tell there are though I cannot see them. off in the distance I hear a slow clapping, the sound reverberating through the entirety of the endless space, faint, and yet unsettling. curious, I try to approach the source of the noise only to find that I cannot move, I have no body. trapped, I instead focus on the noise but the harder I focus on the sound the more faint it grows until a sudden, and intense, sense of panic fills me. all at once the object making the noise, which rarely takes a shape, rushes towards me, clapping faster and faster. I am terrified of it, paralyzed by fear. the more I want it gone the closer it gets. I panic and attempt fruitlessly to escape. it is then that I am overwhelmed by the desire to know what is coming for me. I try to look at it only to find that it has retreated to the distant walls, leaving nothing of it's intent but a faint, slow "clap, clap". this cycle repeats again and again. the more I want it to get the more it retreats and vice versa. I awake in sweat with my heart pounding every time.
This, I have come to realize, is an embodiment of my fear, stripped to it's core elements. I an afraid of having no control over my life, of trying my hardest to achieve my goals only to have them stripped away in such a manner that I am powerless to stop it, and also my fear of loneliness. this fear has brought me to apply what I call "the inevitability clause". when I believe something is unavoidable, I decide to force it to happen so as to save myself future pain. I fear that if I try to become friends with people they'll just hate me anyway an so, inevitability clause, I forsake all social interaction so I never get attached. I fear getting fired from a job so I want to quit. I fear not knowing my own future so I meticulously plan it out step by step and live in constant fear that my plans will fail. there are many things I have suggested to myself that could cause this fear: being forced to testify in court against my own mother using a story I didn't truly remember (my young mind had blocked it out), being bullied in school when I was nothing but nice to people, being criticized at home my whole life for not being good enough at anything, all my past romantic relationships ending for little to no reason (have you ever heard the term "I just don't love you anymore"?)
Thank you for taking the time to listen to me rant. so, what about you? I'd love to talk to people about this. What are you afraid of? have any recurring nightmares you want to share? feel free to message me, or just post your experiences in the comments if you're comfortable with that.