Every once in a while, someone asks me what I’m afraid of. Despite how hard I try, I can never come up with a great response. Obviously I’m human and there are things that I really don’t like/would prefer not to deal with (such as rollercoasters, snakes, or drowning), but I know those aren’t fears to the same extent that some people have them, so I feel strange saying that I’m genuinely afraid of those things. Maybe I just don’t like them.

But I can never come up with a solid response to that question. Today, however, I think I can peg one thing that truly does scare me: it’s humanity, and how quickly people can change their minds about something, or someone.

Quite frankly, it’s a scary idea that someone can wake up one day feeling a certain way, and wake up another day feeling the complete opposite.

A person who has called you beautiful, smart, witty, can pull a 180 and call you ugly, stupid, humorless. A person who has always supported you may wake up one day and not do that anymore. Someone who has always lauded your ideas may one day decide that they’re idiotic or childish, or not worth the time of day.

Someone who tells you they love you before going to bed could wake up and decide that’s not true anymore. Feelings can change in an instant. People can change anytime.

I’m talking about anyone in your life, whether that be platonic friendships or romantic relationships, business colleagues or whoemever else you’d like to speak about. The fact that a person’s feelings about you can change so suddenly is, quite frankly, terrifying to me. The very people that build you up one week, one day, can tear you down the next.

Call me cynical, call me pessimistic, but I’ve had it happen to me before and the idea that it could happen again is terrifying. Go ahead, try and tell me that isn’t scary — good luck convincing me. For now, I’ll try to stay cautiously optimistic and progress forward with my life, but there’s always going to be that little bite of scared uncertainty that is waiting for that to happen.