Loss
No matter what I did, I wasn’t ever enough. My biggest fear is losing the ones I loved, but it doesn’t come to fruition until it leaks into my nightmares. They started off as heavily fictional, the threat being supernatural such as ghosts or ghouls. Of course those types of nightmares stopped being so frightful once I stopped being a child. But I guess my subconscious picked up on that. The nightmare shifted more and more towards the other side of the spectrum. It started off with human attackers and though they’re very possible, they weren’t realistic enough. The scariest nightmare I had was caused by a threat I couldn’t fight: an illness. In it, my brother had caught an incurable illness and all I could do was stand by and watch him suffer; I woke up shaking and in tears. Even as a child I had never woken up so anguished. It was a sort of wake-up call: no matter how strong I get, there will still be some threats I can’t prevent.