Fear Itself

I am absolutely terrified of many, many things: clowns, being in a plane crash, jellyfish, losing one of my senses...a lot of irrational fears that can make some basic experiences a bit challenging. However, when it comes down to it, the most intense fears I have are the ones that fall under one main umbrella: being alone in a crowded world.

In looking at a challenge to choose three legitimate fears, I didn’t have to dig too deep into my psyche to find the heart of what in this big bad world truly frightens me.

1. People have a tendency to leave; by nature, it’s what we do. We move, we grow up, we die...all necessary steps in life. What it also requires, though, is leaving someone behind, and I am terrified of being left behind .

    I do what any self-serving paranoid person does, then: I push people away. I’ve done it with family, friends, significant others...everyone. If I haven’t already done it to you at least once in life, chances are I will. If I push and you leave, you wouldn’t have stayed anyway. If I push and you stay, well, you’re the rare sort.

    It’s not right to behave that way, and I regret nearly every time I’ve done so...but man, that fear is so hard to overcome.

2. Am I afraid of the dark? Um, yeah, aren’t you?! The darkness is inherently frightening because of what it hides: ghoulies, ghosties, and things that go bump in the night. True, those things usually turn out to be monsters of the human variety, but that doesn’t make them any less scary; if anything, it makes them all the more horrible because they are real. So if you knock on my door after the sun sets, yes, I will ninja-roll behind the furniture to peek through the blinds to determine if it is safe to open the door. Hear the stereo? See the TV screen glowing? Don’t care -- there are far too many scary things lingering in the dark. And isn't that the way: I'm afraid of the unknown.

 

3. Perhaps what frightens me the most, though, is insignificance, not mattering, or being forgotten. I write to share my thoughts. I teach because I love the camaraderie and sharing ideas. And what if in all my reaching out to the world, the world doesn't reach out for me? 

      One of my favorite books in high school was a teen thriller called Remember Me (hmm...seems important...), and the final lines of that book have always stayed with me. At the risk of minimizing any impact my words might have, I'll borrow from the end of that book because, sometimes, there's just no better way to say it:

You can only come to the morning through the shadows. - J.R.R. Tolkien