Why do you see C++ as "terrifying"?
Yes, it is a very powerful language and there can be a lot to it, but it shouldn't "terrify" you.
These days, it's generally quite easy to avoid much of its C heritage (including potential security pitfalls) if using the so-called "modern C++" techniques, but the extra power and flexibility is still there if you do ever need it. There are numerous ways of easily avoiding manual memory (or other resource) management, too. The STL and Boost, among numerous other libraries that are out there, offer lots of convenient, high level functionality. The portability of C++ code is often quite excellent, the language and its standard libraries are quite stable, and there are multiple commercial-grade implementations from numerous vendors/projects. You probably won't find anything else that gives you a high degree of performance along with high level abstractions, while also giving you the peace of mind that your code will still compile just fine years or even decades from now.
While it's certainly possible to to overboard and misuse C++ to a point where it causes serious problems, one of the best things about C++ is that it doesn't force you to do that. You generally don't pay for what you don't use, and it's certainly possible to use a very effective subset of the language much as one might use Java or C#, or even Python and JavaScript.
I'd say that C++ is even easier to use than JavaScript is. C++ is much more sensible in so many ways, and nowhere near as quirky or just outright broken in fundamental ways like JavaScript, while also providing at least some type safety and other compile-time checks.
If you want a stable, portable, safe, well-supported language that offers high level functionality without the performance tradeoffs of other languages, then I think that a modern subset of C++ could very well be exactly what you're looking for.