I have a mitral valve regurgitation that gives me trouble, and the sensations have changed over the years. I’m afraid that when I enter the age where heart disease risks go up, I will write off a heart attack as the old valve acting up.
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Since junior high, I have been afraid of losing the self-control that prevents me from, in any given moment, performing the most horrible, atrocious acts… whatever wrong impulse enters my head. Kissing total strangers, punching through the canvases of priceless paintings, shoving kids off of overpasses onto the speeding lanes of traffic below… My mind tries to comfort itself that it has never felt any of these impulses nearly strongly enough to actually risk acting on them, but my imagination is quite vivid, and it’s way too easy to envision myself becoming not just an amoral sociopath, but a genuinely evil force that only exists to show how terribly, terribly easy it is to bring pain, suffering, death, and (sadly not-quite-unimaginable) horror to the world.
I also have the kind of mindset that is horribly fascinated by infohazards like Roko’s Basilisk. Since I have previously described myself as a lifelong peeker-under-of-rocks, I think this fascination could easily get me into trouble.
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I am afraid that unlike the Game of Thrones Bolton-esque character, I will act out in a Ned Stark manner. Horrible, but in some way justified, even when it is only to him.
Neither of us ever will, because of so many reasons. But we do see people in real life that lack that kind of impulse control.
Us creatives can be put into quite the tight spot 
️
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Speaking of infohazards, I know the SCP Foundation has come up a few times on the forum and presumably you’ve given it a shake. Ol’ ●●|●●●●●|●●|● still manages to keep me up at night from time to time.
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Y’all got good fears, mine are boring: I’m afraid of drowning, not of water, or of swimming, but of being underwater and not making it to the surface in time, drowning just below the surface.
And I’m afraid of going hungry, not having food and being hungry.
I’m afraid we’re sliding into global monarchies/dictatorships and there’s nothing us plebs can do about it.
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Never heard of it before. There goes my Sunday!
(If my consciousness gets carried off by that black fuzzy 2521 thing, give my regards to the Coleridge crew. I bequeath my suit to Jonesy.)
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Good point.
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Drowning is one of my many more normal fears but I am a poor swimmer who grew up in a flood zone. Drowning in a car is my worst scenario. It comes from stories of drowning in an underpass but in my dreams it’s usually going over the side of a bridge or getting swept up by a tidal wave.
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the irrational horror that comes over me sometimes as I ride in a metro car over a bridge, directly under the landing approach to the airport. Because it’s unlikely to happen, but it did once (Air Florida 90).
that, and turbulence. Because after an emergency landing in an Ilyushin, it’s hard to not think that maybe that sudden bounce was actually a bad thing.
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I have a fear like that, but it’s of falling through ice. Not that I spend any time on frozen water. I then remind myself that there’s a layer of air between the ice and the water’s surface (which is why, as I understand it, the cool thing below works). Then I imagine trying to breathe that layer of air, and then not being able to find the hole that I fell through as hypothermia sets in becomes my fear. eep!
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[quote]I just think it’s nice that one day, I’ll be dead, and that’ll be it. I won’t have to deal with anything, or be in pain, cuz I’ll not be existing.
[/quote]
You and Mr. Jilly are apparently soulmates. About 8 years ago, Mr. Jilly and I were walking down the back steps of the library (he’s a professor; I am a librarian). I was bitchin’, moanin’, complainin’ about everything: Work, dwelling, kids. I was on that kind of life rant that has been building for weeks.
“I can’t work for her anymore! She’s an idiot! And I’m pretty sure the plumbing in our house is fucked. Or maybe not the plumbing, just the kids because there’s a new water stain on the kitchen ceiling directly underneath the bath and you know it’s little girl that splashes too much …”
He stopped me on the landing, placed his hands on my shoulders and made me look him in the eye. And then he said: “It’s going to be okay. Some day, we’ll be dead and we won’t have to worry about all this shit.”
That right there is why we are still married.
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Not to make it worse… but I think that works because the firework fuse doesn’t need oxygen to burn, not that there’s air under the ice…
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Ah, maybe so!
But don’t ask me
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I know the exact feeling. I think it may stem from ADHD.
That’s why I’m afraid of heights. I’m not actually afraid of heights per se. I’m afraid of precipices, and that nagging impulse in the back of my mind telling me it would be so simple and easy to take a running leap off.
It’s not suicidal. It’s just… Impulsivity.
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That urge to jump is a thing we all feel. Its been studied a lot. It has a name “High place phenomena” Some theories is that our brain is freaking out and just wants to OMG GET DOWN NOW because we are not a species that lives at great heights. Its misguided but its an urge to continue living.
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I’m afraid that someone’s just gonna say the wrong thing to me, really piss me off and I won’t be able to stop punching them.
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My most vivid nightmare, one I’ve remembered since I was a kid (and I can’t even remember most non-dream things) was of this. I woke up trying to claw my way through my blankets. I feel this fear.
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My biggest fear is that people will simply blunder along in monkey-see, monkey-do fashion and refuse to adapt and create social networks in a deliberate fashion - because nobody else does! Or at least, nobody who they were told matters. That masses of people get led by the nose by a few who they are awed as being in possession of some super powers. That masses of people actively enable their oppressors, even while commiserating about them. All because the risk of doing something differently seems more grave and immediate than their own certain disenfranchisement and destruction.
It’s my nightmare both in my waking and sleeping life.
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It’s fun. And very quiet, when the burner is not on.
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