Mari Andrew:
Number one. I live in fear of unexpected mayonnaise. It looks like puss. It's so gross.
Number two. Being rejected. My parents divorced when I was five, and my dad moved away, and he died a few years ago. We were close by letters and phone calls for my childhood, and then we became estranged when I was in college. Ultimately, he had expectations that I wasn't meeting, and I didn't know how. I think maybe I wasn't as appreciative as he wanted me to be. I'm not sure. I don't know if I'll ever know. I mean, I won't know now because he's dead.
Number three. Airports.
Number four. Teenagers. I've written about this and posted it on Instagram and actual teenagers will accuse me of being ageist, but I've always been afraid of them. Before I was a teenager, while I was a teenager. But every once in a while a few of them will come to my events and I feel like they're judging me. I'm not cool enough.
Number five. Not being special. You know, I get compliments on my art. You know, people will say things like, “Oh, this is cute.” And that's, like, the least special thing you could say about anything. You know, you can call anything cute. I identify as the Enneagram type four. And how I knew I was a four is because the the strongest fear of a four is getting up on stage, reading their deep personal poetry, and having someone say, “Oh yeah, that sounds like something that I've done.” That's very, very scary for a four.
Number six. Accidentally plagiarizing. It's happened to me twice, and it is a horrible experience. I drew something almost exactly that a much more famous illustrator had already done. Oh my gosh. All of these people tagged her, and then I saw that she blocked me, and I used my other account to realize she had posted about it. And it was really just the worst feeling. And then a couple months later it happened again with the same illustrator. And if I were her I would definitely think that I was doing it intentionally, but I didn't.
Number seven. Carbon monoxide.
Number eight. My best friend meeting her soulmate before I do.
Number nine. My mom dying and having no family left. My mom is a golden angel. She's just absolutely lovely. I can't imagine that anything will be worth anything after she dies. I can't imagine that life will have any meaning.
Number ten. Being too boring, or too much work for my therapist.
My name is Mari Andrew and these are 10 things that scare me.
