Being scared to live isn’t something you hear every day. And it’s quite a deep, scary thought. But I’ve realised recently that this is how I feel. Scared to live, scared to die.
Now I know this sounds like a pretty irrational fear, but given the current world we live in, I don’t think it’s that irrational anymore. Naturally, my anxiety heightens my fears and worries, but being exposed to the barrage of news and media coverage has certainly heightened my fear of doing things. My first ever big panic attack was mainly triggered by consumption of overly negative news reports – I remember seeing lots of violent attacks and natural disasters in the media, which, coupled with generalised anxiety, accumulated and led to a big break down. I distinctly remember hugging my mum saying, “I’m just so scared of life”. There is so much that can go wrong, so many horrible emotions to experience, so many harmful people, and I just wanted to protect myself from everything.
At the time, I thought this was just a momentary feeling, but these fears arose again just less than a year ago when I began planning a solo trip abroad. Little did I know that planning for the trip would bring so many anxieties to the surface, causing lots of tears and A LOT of overthinking. For weeks my thoughts were spiralling, trying to envision what the experience would be like and how I would travel for 30 hours entirely alone. The most extreme worrying, however, came from the fear of something bad happening. I was massively catastrophising, with the dreaded ‘what if’s’ taking full control – what if the plane crashes, what if there’s a natural disaster, what if I get ill etc.
When I’m back at home living my day-to-day life as a student, this feeling is kept at bay. However, there is always an underlying fear of general life, especially when there is so much bad happening in the world. The rise in knife crime, for example, is something that can trigger this overwhelming feeling, as well as environmental crises and political conflict. It’s times like these where I just want to stay at home forever because I fear if I go anywhere then something bad will happen - I guess this fear of living is simultaneously a fear of death.
With the constant threat of war, ecological catastrophe, violent attacks and so much more, it’s hard to maintain a positive outlook on life, especially as a final year student with the big wide world looming. But we are all in it together, and we can’t wrap ourselves up at home forever.