Deadly fear

I am the original scaredy-cat quivering, quaking & worrying in the corner, staring desperately at the floor wishing it would swallow me up whole & rescue me / release me from my fear.
This fear takes over my body & soul, I can think of nothing else & no rational thoughts will battle their way through & as for logic? well, that has no place & is not welcome in my land of fear & panic.

I fear so many things from the run of the mill bugs & spiders to the usual fears about family health & happyness. Then there's the fears & worries over kids education, my marriage, my husbands work & of course our bill paying ability.

These all scare me silly!

I can worry myself to pieces over my son; is he happy? Does he love me? Does he love daddy more? Is he doing well at school? Does he have friends?
Or worry over my husband: Is my husbands job secure? Is he going to lose his job? Is he happy in this marriage? Does he still want me? Want to be with me? Does he want to be with someone else?
Or even fear I'm not a good mother, that my son deserves a better mum, I fear that I'm not a good mum & that I've let him down & I fear that I'm too selfish to be a proper mum, a mu "like everyone else".

Finances are great fodder for worriers like me usually along the lines of: Can I pay the ...... bill this month? Will I be cut off? If I do such & such can I afford to live for the rest of the month? Will the bailiffs be popping round & not for a friendly cup of tea?
These fears are usually accompanied by vibrant daydreams of us living in a home with nothing in it just bare walls, with us only eating one slice of plain, unbuttered bread between the three of us because we can't afford anything more & my son in ragamuffin, Oliver Twist style rags pleading for just one mouthfull of milk. Exaggeration? Yes, of course but once panic sets in all realism flies away & the panic & fear are given free reign to increase.

Then there's christmas to worry about!

My biggest fear, the one that really scares me & wakes me up trembling in fright is the thought of being buried alive or being buried & then waking up in a coffin when it is too late.
The blackness all around me, lying there knowing that each second that passes is the lessening of my hopes to be saved / rescued, all this closing in on me with each breath. I can imagine the worms moving & writhing in the mud surrounding me & knowing that each breath is one less breath of oxygen, one breath nearer to a death of suffocation.
It will not matter how much I shout (which uses up lots of oxygen) or how much I cry & kick all I can do is lie there & wait to breath my last.
I can imagine the coffin getting smaller & smaller & my minutes on the earth diminishing while while family stand at my grave wishing I was still there but knowing I am gone, their hearts shattering into another million pieces while I lie there, trapped, screaming, hoping & praying for rescue.

This fear is apparantly quite a common one, it even has a complicated latin name, it's called Taphophobia.
Many people have the same fear or phobia, some have even arranged to be buried with some
kind of signal they can use to alert people to the fact they are actually still alive. According to Wikipedia there is an urban legend that states that the sayings "Saved by the bell", and "Dead ringer" are both derived from the notion of having a rope attached to a bell outside the coffin, which could alert people that the recently buried person is not yet deceased which sounds like a very sensible idea to me & one I plan to implement when my time comes or should that be passes?

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