I am most afraid of losing those closest to me. I'm not sure I could handle them all dying, or being dead. I've come to value them over anything else, so losing them would be incredible devastating.
After that, I am most afriad of heights. I've nearly passed out from being in some high places.
Not actually being dead, oh no, the act of dying. Or more specifically, I'm afraid it'll be a painful and horrifying experience.
And it's coming. We're all going to die eventually.
Will I die, bleeding out, in some terrible traffic accident? Will I get caught in a building while it burns and be incinerated alive?
Or will I drown?
Drowning.
If I had to pick one, that's my single greatest fear.
Dan Brown described drowning in his book, Deception Point. Here's the relevant passage, but beware, it's one of the most terrifying things I've read.
Drowning, Ming had once read, was the most horrific death imaginable. He had never dreamed he would find himself on the verge of experiencing it. His muscles refused to cooperate with his mind, and already he was fighting just to keep his head above water. His soggy clothing pulled him downward as his numb fingers scratched the sides of the pit.
His screams were only in his mind now.
And then it happened.
Ming went under. The sheer terror of being conscious of his own impending death was something he never imagined he would experience. And yet here he was? sinking slowly down the sheer ice wall of a two-hundred-foot-deep hole in the ice. Multitudes of thoughts flashed before his eyes. Moments from his childhood. His career. He wondered if anyone would find him down here. Or would he simply sink to the bottom and freeze there? entombed in the glacier for all time.
Ming's lungs were screaming for oxygen. He held his breath, still trying to kick toward the surface. Breathe! He fought the reflex, clamping his insensate lips together. Breathe! He tried in vain to swim upward. Breathe! At that instant, in a deadly battle of human reflex against reason, Ming's breathing instinct overcame his ability to keep his mouth closed.
Wailee Ming inhaled.
The water crashing into his lungs felt like scalding oil on his sensitive pulmonary tissue. He felt like he was burning from the inside out. Cruelly, water does not kill immediately. Ming spent seven horrifying seconds inhaling in the icy water, each breath more painful than the last, each inhalation offering none of what his body so desperately craved.
Finally, as Ming slid downward into the icy darkness, he felt himself going unconscious. He welcomed the escape.
That brought up some terrible memories... I didn't die but I came close and it was the single scariest moment of my life. Drowning/suffocation has got to be one of the worst ways to go.
I'm gonna go with drowning. I experienced it once and it was enough to keep me away from oceans, lakes, rivers and pools until.. Well I actually still avoid them. And I avoided bathtubs until I hit 6 feet tall.
It's really unlikely, but being stranded in space.
Imagine being stuck, drifting without any control of your trajectory, billions of kilometers from home, heading further and further away, unable to avoid the inevitable point where supplies/oxygen/energy runs out, and you just have to either commit suicide or wait for your unavoidable oblivion.
Either being wrong or rejection.
I actively fear being wrong and I attempt to take steps in order to correct that, however I'm not sure which is the biggest fear.
I think the rejection fear is more subconscious, whereas being wrong is more consious.
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