25 Things I Fear For Good Reason

The majority of the time I'm a very rational, level-headed person. Sure, I can be dramatic and excitable and crazy, but that's not my default. As for the rest of the time, I tend to be consumed by one dominant trait: Anxiety. Even when applying all my rationality, telling myself over and over to stop thinking about something, to stop worrying about something, it tends to just get worse. When the anxiety monster strikes, nothing will make it stop. It continues to pick and pick until I cry, scream, have a panic attack, or become immobile.

This year I've been actively working on conquering my anxiety and am getting better. But that's not what I want to talk about right now. Let's have a little fun with Anxious Bonnie first.

A recent post on the website Hello Giggles, 20 Things I Vaguely Fear With No Explanation, had me clicking and reading faster than anything. While only one of hers is also one of mine, it got me reminiscing. I have spent a lot of time worrying about things, mainly things that could never happen, but in order to ensure they don't happen, I've had to worry about them first. 

So these are some thoughts that have consumed me more than once, for more than 30 minutes, and some for many years. Some I've even lost sleep over, like the prison one. A lot of them no longer phase me. But some will still grab hold of my brain, like the prison one. (Prison really scares me.)

• Fainting in public and being robbed or rubbed.
• Being stalked by someone and how ineffective a restraining order would be.
• Marrying someone and having them lie to me about their identity or plot to kill me like in a Lifetime movie.
• Going to a foreign country and being accused of drug smuggling and going to jail like in "Brokedown Palace."
• Falling accidentally from a great height and people think it's suicide.
• Losing my shoes and having to walk home barefoot.
• Being swept away in a tsunami because I don't have enough upper-body strength to hold on to anything.
• Being accused of or framed for a crime I didn't commit.
• Going to prison.
• Drowning alone.
• Falling off a cruise ship and surviving in the ocean for several days before dying.
• Having my drink drugged in a bar.
• Dying from mass influenza and plague.
• Dying from or witnessing a mass and coordinated bird attack
• Being held captive and tortured, specifically involving fingernails and teeth.
• Being held at gunpoint and saying something stupid and getting shot.
• Being in a coma like in "Diving Bell and Butterfly" and only able to communicate by blinking, but no one realizes.
• Having everyone else think I'm insane but I think I'm totally sane.
• Being committed to a mental institution when I really am sane.
• Having all telecommunication networks down and no way to contact my family.* 
• Leaving my work laptop on the metro.
• Choking alone.
• Falling in shower alone.
• Falling and breaking my front teeth. 
• Being at the Zoo when animals break out of their enclosure and then they attack me. Or animals escaping from the National Zoo and running the 2 or so miles to my apartment and attacking me.

*This one is actually quite serious and outlined in terrifying detail at the Spy Museum as a potential terrorist attack. With no computers, Internet, power, etc., we'd have no ATMs or phones. So, parents, we need a plan: I'll come to NC. I know you're probably thinking that I have a terrible sense of direction and would end up in New York, but I'd realize it once I got to Maryland, and would turn around then.