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.
People, dying without ever been loved by a woman. Both of those are related.
Extinction. Our technology gives us the power of gods, but we still have the brains of hunter-gatherers optimised for living in tribes of less than 150 people. My own death doesn’t worry me, I’m not bothered by knowing I’ll be forgotten, but the possibility that there might not be anyone to carry on is what I think about at 3 AM when I can’t sleep.
The fact I won’t be able to retire. I don’t have the money because of financial abuse from my SO. I honestly don’t know what I’ll ever do. People in my city are living in tents in the park and I assume I will have to do that. I’ll have a good pension but it won’t be enough for the cost of living as it is now.
(Please don’t suggest I leave, as kind as you all are, I cannot afford it).
I don’t really know how to describe it, but it’s like I go through life just waiting for the other shoe to drop. When something shocking or remotely dangerous happens, my brain automatically assumes the worst is going to happen and I like go into survival mode. I get filled with such dread.
Dementia.
My mother has dementia.
Every time I forget something I know I should know it terrifies me.
That’s a fear I have as well. I heard walnuts are good for brain health, but they taste like dry paste. I still eat them with some fermented foods and it helps. I also heard pizzle games are supposed to help keep your brain engaged.
Get tested early. Your mother’s dementia may not have been found till late stage. We have treatments for the earlier stages
Thank you for that.
That what ultimately ends my time here, will be my own fault.
And spiders… Fuck spiders.
The speed at which we are (not) acting on climate change. Our tolerance for neoliberals/capitalists absolutely wiping their arse with the whole planet.
Dementia
Alzheimer/Dementia is one of those few situations where I really can’t blame someone for going out on their own terms. The idea of being trapped inside your own effectively disintegrating mind is terrifying.
The same thought for your physical body also seems reasonable to me. Or just for intolerable pain.
Yeah I think its weird that it’s considered more morally sound to make them waste away in agony then let them willingly end their suffering through controlled means.
Like, if they’re gonna do it, they’re gonna do it. Wouldn’t it be better to make sure they do it in the cleanest way possible?
I live it everyday. Others around me see and deal with it. Very frustrating. Sometimes you know its happening and sometimes your just not functioning normal anymore. Its like being a shell of your former self.
This for me. Would love a peaceful death with next to know one ever knowing who I was but with me completely knowing who I was until the last moment (well ideally in sleep so that last part is a little malleable)
This or some kind of psychosis… Mental health, neurocognitive abnormalities scare the shit out of me. That its very possible it can happen to me.
I once met a guy who was stuck in a drug enduced psychosis when I was 12 or something. It shook me pretty badly. I’m not opposed to drugs at all, but I’ve always had an irrational fear of halucigenic drugs since.
Lots of people make almost full recoveries from psychosis. Not so much from dementia.
Being eternally trapped in a mental prison. Imagine having a panic attack that never ends. I’m pretty sure that type of prolonged stress would cause a psychotic break where your psyche fractures and you become a despondent shell. You would become deathly afraid of everything, even the people you love, because of an unceasing paranoia. That basically sounds like hell to me.
I’m not really afraid of the idea of nothingness after death, because at least then I am released from the torment of living.
My biggest fear is that my office chair might break in such a way that the hydraulic piston breaks through the seat and punctures my colon.
I want to both upvote and downvote this comment… I chose upvote.
And I thank you.
Well thanks a lot, that’s now my fear too.
You are welcome!
Gotta get an ass guard, like Thor has
Oh… oh no… Damn it, I will never sit in an office chair the same ever again without thinking about this.
That’s niche.
Having to work for another 20 years.
Haha only 20?
Checks calendar, “oh shit.”
Look at the millionaire that only has to work 20 more years
I have another 40 :(
ooh. don’t make me think about that. If its even only 20.
Micro-plastics
A hypothetical fear of course, one with my wife who I’ve been with for 15 years now.
One day, maybe hopefully 30-50 years in the future, my wife and I look back and think about how good our lives were. We raised happy and successful kids. We bought a house. We had dozens of pets. We celebrate the end of our life together. But she doesn’t make it.
And I have to spend the final years alone with memories of her. Two controllers. Two spoons. Two of everything for decades. Now just me.
And Never being able to explain to the rest of the world how amazing she was.
I’m so terrified that my wife will go before me…
But I also don’t want to let her down by going before her and making her live her own last days/weeks/years alone…
Love is so difficult
Letting down people I love somehow
Ask to be their pallbearer.
Fortunately I don’t know any scrum masters personally so they would not even get the experience of being let down last time by a dev. Exceot in a purely metaphorical sense I guess.
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.
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.
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.
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:
