Fear.

Each of us has at least one. But whenever I am posed with the question:

"What are you most afraid of?"

I am not entirely sure as to how I should answer.

Why?

Because, in my mind, at least, there are two categories of fears: visible fears and invisible fears. Visible fears are the ones that everyone knows. Like being afraid of spiders, clowns, heights, snakes... Anything that you can see with your own two eyes that strikes fear into your heart. But invisible fears are different. Nobody really considers our invisible fears. Mostly because they aren't out in the open for all to see like a spider. Invisible fears are things that exist in our own mind. Like the fear of being forgotten, fear of failure, or even death. We all have visible fears and invisible fears. The only difference? We constantly fear our invisible fears, whereas we only fear visible fears when they are present.

For example, I am absolutely terrified of natural disasters, I've always hated watching natural disaster movies and the news after a natural disaster struck somewhere on the earth. Always. I can also add spiders and clowns to these visible fears. But see? I am fine as long as I don't watch a natural disaster movie, or see a spider or clown. But my invisible fears.... They're always with me. Interrupting my thoughts from time to time throughout the day. One of my invisible fears is never finding that one special person out of seven-point-two-billion to love me. But the fear that trumps that one is the fear that I will. I will and I will be head over heels. My fear is that this one special person will tell me they love me everyday and mean it, but then one day, they will only say it out of habit. I fear they will come to be annoyed at all my quirks they used to find adorable. I fear that one day I will no longer be good enough for them. That is my invisible fear. And it's terrifying. And it's not like I can close my eyes and not see it. It's always there, tugging at my mind.

And I know there are others out there with the same fears, visible or invisible, and there's people with worse fears. I am not writing this because I feel we need to stop fearing things, because we can't. It's in our nature to fear things. I'm writing this to justify that invisible fears are just as big of a deal as visible fears if not more. I'm not saying we should stop fearing things completely, but I am saying I don't think any of us should let our fears, no matter how big, visible or invisible, hold us back in life.