FEAR: a distressing emotion aroused by impending danger, pain, etc., whether the threat is real or imagined; the feeling of being afraid.

I was thinking the other day about fear... pure, genuine, fear.
Many people have things that they are afraid of, whether it is spiders, the dark, or clowns...
I do not have any fears of actual things, like those mentioned above.
However, I have been known to have the fear of rejection, fear of failure, fear of being unworthy or unloved.

But neither of those two types of fears were what was on my mind.
It was the "distressing emotion aroused by impending danger" type of fear that I was thinking about. I was thinking about the time[s] in my life where I thought, "this is it, we're all going to die". I came up with two instances.


1. Summer of 2008. Camp counselor. 10 jr high girls out on a pontoon. 10 jr high girls not sitting down. Long story short: the pontoon almost flipped over. Don't you even think about telling me that it's not possible. It got almost perpendicular to the water. At that point -- it was not possible for me to have any more fear than what I had already.
My thoughts:
1. we're all going to die [less realistic]
2. the pontoon is going to flip [semi-realistic]
3. i am going to get fired [who knows]
4. i'll never be able to work at camp again [who knows]
5. i don't know what to do [true]

I had so much fear in that moment. Obviously, it all turned out alright. 1/2 the girls fell out, and when it leveled out the water was over my knees, as the pontoon took on so much water -- it was submerged to over the benches. I didn't take a pontoon out for over a month after that. And the next time... I was the most strict pontoon driver you'll ever see.


2. Summer of 2005ish [sometime around there]. Family vacation to Mexico. After rope swinging through the jungle. Swimming in the river. Toni and I are adventurous people... ending up going through white water rapids [the kind with big boulders above and beneath the water] without a raft, without life jackets, without anything. Spending most of the time under the water being smashed against the rocks -- sometimes making it up for gasping breaths of air.
My thoughts:
1. Toni is going to die
2. Her parents are going to hate me
3. But I'll probably die too
4. The water is moving so fast
5. We don't have a chance to make it to the side
6. These rocks freakin kill to be thrown against

To this day, I have no clue how we both managed to make it to the side. All I remember is seeing Toni make it to the side -- then I was there beside her somehow. But during that time -- I experienced fear like I never had before.