Black Holes: My Existential Fear of Becoming Human Vermicelli

When I was around maybe five years old, give or take, I picked up one of the most recent editions of Science News that I could get my hands on and began to read. Now this specific edition was unique in the sense that it discussed some of the newest findings in the fields of space exploration, specifically touching on recent discoveries around the scientific phenomenon of black holes. In this article it said that being sucked into a black hole would make your body stretch out like a wet noodle, the black hole sucking in anything and everything in its general vicinity. Now five year old me took this new information to heart, and so began my eternal fear of black holes, and becoming a human noodle. I would stay up late into the night, crying and sobbing, not able to close my eyes, because of the small chance that late into the night our sun would supernova and suck up the entirety of the milky way. It's stupid, but it got to the point where I couldn’t go a day without the thought crossing my mind that eventually everything I know and love will eventually disappear. That random article in a science news from 2012 filled me with a constant sense of existential dread and morality, that most elementary school students probably shouldn’t have. Now, I don’t really fear black holes and supernovas, and it’s funny but sometimes I wish my fears were as stupid and doomsday oriented as they had been when I was younger. Now all I have is a constant sense of anxiety, a fear of failure, and too many insecurities to count. Sometimes, only very rarely it gets so bad that I almost wish the sky would explode in a fiery mess, that a black hole would materialize and suck me right up. Leaving me floating alone with no company but the expanding universe and noodle arms.