Each week, I'm going to suck it up and write about the things that scare me shitless. And hopefully, through writing, I can come to terms and move past them. Last week, I spoke about my fear of sex.
This week:
Fear #4: I am afraid of dying
I think this is something that a lot of people are afraid of. For me, I think it's because there's something final about it, so ending. And also because I have this deep-seated fear that if I voice something aloud, it will come true. Even now, as I'm typing this to you, I'm afraid that I'm going to have a brain aneurism and die. They'll find me, five months later, with this blog post half-posted.
Writer's brain, amirite?
In Empath, there's a part in the book where a character comes very close to death. I found myself having a really difficult time writing that scene. I'm not afraid of dead people; rather, what really scares me more than anything else is the thought of me dying.
I have worked in a very recognizable government building, one that has been the target of a terrorist attack. Every day I get on the metro - another terrorist target probably - and I walk into the front door of the building, past the guards with AK-47s and into my office where I sit and try to not think about the worst possible things that could happen to me sitting here.
Besides that, I'm also afraid that I'm going to choke to death in my house. And every time I have a pain in my head, I'm having an aneurism (see paragraph above). Either way, nobody will find my body for years or something like that (again, see paragraph above).
I think what I'm really afraid if is that I'll die before I complete everything that I'm planning. I think that there's so much goodness coming my way that it would just make sense that it wouldn’t come to pass. Because - and here we come to the crux of my fears - I'm not worth all the goodness.
This life is going too well, so of course it's going to end. Everything good ends for me.
This inevitably boils down to the idea that Lyssa (from my other series) struggles with, the idea of being worthy. It's the difference between expecting that things won't work out and hoping for the best and adjusting sails when they don't. In the first case, life is much harder because you focus on all of the bad things instead of the good.
And when you're focusing on all the ways life didn't go your way, you miss out on all the times things were even better than you expected. If I were to die tomorrow, then I would much rather have used the time given in a good way, versus spent it terrified all the time.
I also know that my fears grow to Anghenfil-sized monsters when I don't have anyone to bring me back into the real world. Living alone is great, except that I don't have anyone to talk to but myself. So when an anxiety attack hits, or I begin to ruminate over an ache or a pain, it festers and boils until I am damned near convinced that I'm going to drop dead at any second.
Moving home will change some of that, I hope, because I won't be allowed to crawl into my own headspace. And while I'll probably never truly get over this fear, maybe I can spend a little less time being preoccupied with it.
~~~
Lauren Dailey is in break-up hell.
Stuck between moving on and letting go, she puts on a brave face while crying herself to sleep at night. But when a mysterious voice promises escape from her sadness, she is suddenly transported to a new world. And in this place, the slightest touch pulls her out of her tortured emotions into the mind of another - an empath.
The villagers - sweet Aerona and her mischievous twins, wise Siors, and hunky Cefin - welcome her and the blessings her empath powers bring. But this world is not without its dangers. The Anghenfil, a fire-breathing monster, has haunted the village for decades, and has a taste for empaths. And that mysterious voice promising escape from sadness? It's sounding more like a whisper tinged with smoke and embers.
Preorder today on the below stores. Available May 15th.
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