Things Everyone is Afraid Of (And How to Avoid Them)

  1. Not having friends

A person without friends is the fry at the bottom of the McDonald’s bag. Making friends is simple: be yourself. But maybe not all of yourself, not right away. You don’t want to come across as desperate, so present yourself as the person you believe your potential friend would want as a friend. Then, gradually incorporate true elements of your personality over time, once they’ve grown complacent in the friendship and won’t notice.

  1. Not being alive

A person who is not alive is not really a person at all, are they? They’re a ghost, or an angel, or reincarnated as your best friend’s niece, or they’re nothing at all. If these outcomes are undesirable to you, eat a golden apple, bathe in the Fountain of Youth, fall madly in love with a vampire, or seek out a witch who’ll perform an immortality spell for a reasonable fee. If none of these options are feasible for you, you’ll have to come to terms with your own mortality or die lying to yourself. There is no advice on how to comprehend the end of your existence, there’s not even proof it can be done, but you should certainly try not to die a liar.

  1. Not being the Hero

A person who isn’t the Hero is the Villain. Absolutely no one sees themselves as the Villain, at least at first, because we all start out believing we’re doing the right thing. Sometimes you have to realize you are wrong. The person you thought was the Villian is actually the Hero and the person you thought was the Hero (you) is the Villian. Being the Villain means you have no one to blame for your problems except yourself, or perhaps society, but you can only hold one of those accountable. You also have to realize and somehow make peace with being remembered negatively.

  1. Not being the Hero or the Villain

Realizing you are a secondary character is crushing. Everyone fancies themselves the Hero, and at least the Villain gets remembered. A secondary character loses all sense of their own importance, no longer sure if their story matters. To others, a secondary character lacks depth, emotional or intellectual. If you find yourself a secondary character, you may take solace in knowing you do serve a purpose, be it comic relief, exposition, or a deus ex machina. The purposes a secondary character may serve are varied, but you are unlikely to feel fulfilled as a person.

  1. Not being loved

Every person is deserving of love, be it the unconditional love of family, the barely conditional love of close friendship, or the conditional but committed love of a partner. Being deprived of any of these can slowly crush a person to nothing. This is the most primal fear of all. People can overcome even fear of death for those they love, becoming a martyr for a personal faith. Faith that the loved one will remember you kindly, simultaneously thanking you and cursing you for leaving them. Give your sister a kidney but be tragically lost during the operation. Leap in front of a bus to shove a child to safety. Sacrifice your dream job to take care of your father in his final days. Any sort of voluntary suffering on behalf of a loved one is likely to ensure you are loved.

 

  1. Not making it

Everyone feels they are destined for greater things. Better circumstances than you were

born into. Aspirations to be a raunchy comedian who makes the audience absolutely piss themselves, the president who leaves office with an approval rating above ninety percent, the founder of a non-profit dedicated entirely to the preservation of the black-footed ferret, or the person who makes time travel a reality and as a result screws the rest of us over. We all have that dream we believed in. As a child, this belief is unshakeable, written on the inside of your heart. As you grow up and abandon childhood ideals about adult life and realize the odds of you actually becoming significant beyond your circle are very low, you scribble over what you had accepted as fact with a Sharpie, pretending you are content with a life of monotony and mediocracy. Pretending you aren’t afraid of not being something special doesn’t mean you aren’t still afraid.

 

This poem is about: 
Me

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