The Only Thing We Have to Fear...

I think the worst emotion to feel is fear. I'd rather be angry, excited, guilty, bored, lonely, anything other than that sick, fizzy, wretched feeling. I was thinking about fear on the bus this morning. (Because I didn't want to go to work, because my boss yelled at me on Friday and I felt flashes of fear, periodically, all through the weekend, thinking about having to face her today. Which is stupid, because it's such a little thing - but I'm not good with confrontations.)

Some other things that make me feel afraid, some of which I am certainly going to have to do in my life:
- Going to a job interview.
- Having a baby.
- Buying a house.
- Moving away from my parents.
- Getting sick or disabled in a permanent way. Like, finding out I have diabetes and I have to deal with that for the rest of my life. Or losing my sight. Or getting paralyzed because I wimp out and have an epidural. Which actually still happens to some women.
- Experiencing a terrorist attack.
- Losing my partner. I'd rather die first. I just don't think I could handle the loss.
- Getting attacked physically - mugged or raped.

And the mild ones:
- Driving alone at night when I don't know where I'm going.
- Getting in trouble for something I did - socially, work-related, whatever. I can't stand being torn down in public.

I'm reading Catch Me If You Can by Frank Abagnale, and I'm so in awe of his chutzpah. I'd love to have that kind of confidence. He basically lived with fear every day of his life, knowing he could be caught at any time, and that if he was caught, the consequences were going to be really bad. I could never do that, even if I was smart enough to carry off the cons the way he did (and he was brilliant).

I wonder if maybe I'm unusually fearful just because nothing that bad has ever happened to me. Little things like my boss yelling at me totally crush me, just because I'm not used to that. Maybe I should've been more of a delinquent when I was a kid, so I could toughen up. Maybe I should welcome the little things, even go out of my way to find them, so I can get the experience I need before the bigger ones come along.