Fears

This is the second prompt in the "30 Things My Kids Should Know About Me" project.  The directions are to describe three legitimate fears and explain how they became fears.  I'm trying not to get too heavy, but I have a lot of fears....

1.  I'm very much afraid of the dark, more specifically, dark basements.  This comes from watching scary movies as a kid.  I never liked scary movies, but my friends and my cousins always watched them and I didn't want to be a wimp, so I crawled under a blanket and watched them, too.  Whenever I'm walking up a dark staircase, I tend to take two steps at a time while my heart races because I just KNOW that Freddie Kruger is behind me.  I know it.  

2.  I'm afraid of heights!  This one is fairly recent and it took me by surprise.  I used to love heights - tall buildings, cliffs, roller coasters...you name it!  I used to rappel down rock walls at the Red River Gorge.  I used to work on a high ropes course and teach kids how to conquer their fear of heights!  Maybe it's a result of getting older, or having kids and realizing how much I have to lose, but now - when I stand on anything higher than a story or two - all I can think about are the million things that could go wrong.  I tried to ride a Ferris wheel last summer and I almost passed out!  A sub-fear connected to this one would be my fear of sidewalk grates or those crazy glass sidewalks at the aquarium.  I don't like walking on things if I don't know what's underneath!  It just doesn't make any sense. 

3.  I'm afraid of failing.  I don't like being a disappointment to anyone, which is why I often have a hard time saying "no" to people.  If someone asks me to do something or be responsible for something, I assume it's a great honor and they're asking because they have confidence in me, so I always accept.  This gets me into trouble, especially at work, but it's also led to some great opportunities.  I'm not a perfectionist, but I'm very afraid that someone will see me or judge me as "not good enough," so I try really hard to be THE BEST at everything, which of course, makes me mediocre at everything because it's impossible to be the best at everything.  I know this, but it doesn't change my fear of failure. 

I have some much bigger fears, the kind that everyone's afraid of, but if I let myself write about them, I'll get too sad.  When I looked at the prompt I realized that it doesn't ask for your three BIGGEST fears, just three LEGITIMATE fears, so I let myself get away with these.  They are totally legitimate, right?