What Adult Fears Haunt Me That Childhood Never Knew? #Poetry

What is it about growing up?

it invites fear new, like smoke, like fog, settling thick stubborn.

as a child, fear was a specter one flick of a nightlight could erase— the dark, strange sounds, shadows slipping down walls.

now it’s in my bones, a cracked mirror I can’t piece together.

There is fear of death (no, not death itself), but the slow erosion of time, things I once thought would never break— the world dissolves into dust.

mortality now, no longer some shadow abstract, it ticks inside me, like a clock I didn’t wind up.

Failure – it used to be a stumble, a quick bruise, nothing more. Now, it grows roots,
digs in.

what if one step ruins me? what if a choice unravels my life one wrong turn, a needle drawn, a cord frayed, forever.

Control? an illusion. as a child it was everywhere— I followed trails, paths, straight lines and someone held the map.

Now? I am supposed to be the cartographer, but the ink bleeds, and storms wash my roads away.

there’s no compass, only chaos.

and then there’s regret: a shadow it creeps up the walls, an echo of past, of doors unentered, dreams deferred.

each choice a piece of time chipped away, each "yes" a "no" to something else, each path grows weeds as I turn away.

Will I look back, decades later? see the wasted years, the squandered days like sand, all scattered between my fingers.

and then there's this—fear of vulnerability, naked skin, a body on display, raw heart held in unsteady hands.

I once wore my heart freely,
an open book, but now to be seen too deeply is a wound unhealed.

I fear being unremembered, a whisper lost in a world roaring with noise.

once, simply being was enough.

now, I long to leave something, a trace of a voice, a memory, a spark that says: I was here.

I am afraid of all the invisible specters— the ticking clocks, the closed doors, the nights that bleed into nothing.

I carry these fears like stones in my pockets, like paper-thin ghosts

#AdultFears #GrowingUp #ChildhoodMemories #ExistentialDread #OvercomingFear #LifeJourney #ModernStruggles #MentalHealth #SelfReflection #EmotionalGrowth