There Is No Name For My Phobia

There is no name for the phobia I have. The closest one that remotely comes within orbit of it is called Chronophobia, but even that is a pale expression of it.


Plainly put, I fear the future. I don't fear time. I simply fear what I know is going to come to pass. Pain and suffering, loss, regret, things that I cannot avoid or change. It is as though I am sliding down this slope, knowing the ledge is at the bottom, and I cannot stop. Or, knowing the end of the story, a book or a movie, and being forced to endure it happening despite not wanting to.


I know how the story ends, I know what is going to happen to get there, and I am afraid of that.


This sense of overwhelming lose to come, of seeing those you care about suffering and dying, is so intense, so extreme, so overwhelming it makes it impossible to experience joy. In fact it makes me fear joy nearly as much. For enjoyment is an illusion that is not real. It does not endure, it is temporary at best and is often followed by long terms of pain and suffering.


The fear of the future coupled with Anhedonia make living impossible.


It is as though, and this is just purely for examples sake, one has been thrust back into time and knows the future. And they know the future to be filled with agony, suffering, loss, regret, bitterness and pain. And one does not want to relive this but is being forced to by happenstance. The only escape is death. Yet, while I don't fear my own death, I do fear what it might do to those I love. How will those close to me, or those that depend upon me such as say a pet, survive if am gone? I am sure they will endure, but the thought of causing them, indeed any one or anything, pain is so repugnant to me that that alone is a greater fear.


I do not want to be the source, cause of, or instrument of others pain. I know that they will face pain (emotional and physical) in life and I do not want to add to that in any way.


The emotion of what I feel is a sense of foreboding loss, fear of change, fear of time to come, fear of the future, fear of joy, all rolled up into one super phobia that hangs over me like a cloud of thick and heavy darkness which bogs me down and suffocates hope right out of existence. And without hope, one cannot endure.


Yet I endure. So what be the name for the phobia I have? There is no name for it, yet.


In a way, I feel most often as though I am reliving events that are not real. That I am locked into a living story of times that have long since passed and I am punished to relive them knowing in some small way, and it only takes a small awareness of this, that they end poorly. The sense of hopelessness I am awash with makes the despair I feel all that much more powerful.


Last man standing, trapped without hope of rescue, sentenced to a long lonely and slow death, all alone in the darkness of a damp cave of filled with emptiness and devoid of anything joyful. Knowing the future to be long one painful one yet come and not being able to get out of its way is without equal, worse than death. It is utter hopelessness.


I know how the story will end, I know I have no choices, no hope for a better out come, and because of this, I sincerely and utterly Fear of the Future.