Being Afraid of Fear

I am afraid of taking off the armour I have so carefully crafted over the years. I am afraid of not numbing my mind, of not creating dense layers of fog that keep me from seeing through the eyes of the soul. I am afraid of facing the abyss that might appear before me if I open the door to this primal emotion.

It is as though I can already hear the sacred drums rising from the depths of my being, calling to me, demanding the release of this ancient beast. And with every beat, my thoughts are pulled away and drawn towards it. I can feel it tuning my heart to its rhythm, making it beat faster and faster.

What would happen if I broke its chains?

Am I even allowed to?

I ask you: could the others bear it? And, more importantly, could I?

How many suppressed memories would suddenly come rushing out?

“But those things are over. You lived through them. You are supposed to integrate them and move forward.”

So are you allowed to let it loose? To let it burst out and devour every cell in your body?

“No.”

Because “you are supposed to live in peace.”
“You must always look on the bright side.”
“You must never burden other people.”
“You must remember that others have it worse.”
“You must have self-control.”
“You must become better so that you may finally be rewarded” — by your possible God, your mother, your father, your partner, society, or perhaps by something greater still.

So what are you supposed to do?

What you have learned to do better than anything else.

Your saving strategy. The one that taught you how to survive as a child.

“Be INVULNERABLE.”

And yet, inside this illusion of omnipotence, you fail to see what your intellect, at other times, allows you to recognise so clearly in others:

this “MONSTER” cannot be contained.

It cannot be chained.

Like a shadow, it crawls within you, finding every possible way to make its presence known. It steals your ability to be “present” by any means necessary, choosing either the mind or the body as its ally.

And yet, all you feel is an inexplicable emptiness.

“Invulnerable.”

“Monster?”

That is how I have written it into the fairy tale of my life.

Like the bogeyman hiding inside the wardrobe, waiting to frighten me — except now, as the grown-up hero of the story, “nothing scares me anymore.”

But what about the little child who still lives inside me?

The child who lived in a state of constant terror.

How can you and I invalidate what that child experienced?

How can we refuse to allow them to feel it, just as we were not allowed to feel it back then by those well-meaning terrorists who, supposedly acting for our own good, demanded mature understanding from a soul that may have been wise, but was still tender, unfinished, and unformed?

I know.

Even now, as I write these words, the same voice floods my mind:

“You’re exaggerating.
Nothing was ever that terrible.
You weren’t afraid.
There was nothing to be afraid of.
Get over it already. You’re an adult now.
You’re only hurting yourself by continuing to think about these things.”

And all I want is a little peace and quiet.

To tell her, “Be quiet now.”

To gather, one by one, the letters and syllables spilling from her rabid, ravenous mouth and turn them into a thread — a thread that will sew her lips tightly shut, once and for all.

And there, in the absolute silence, perhaps for the first time, I might remove the monster’s mask from this creature.

It does not belong to it.

No…

It belongs to those who created it…

And then, with its face finally bare, we might be able to look each other in the eyes.

An understanding expressed with nothing more than a nod.

And, for a start, simply whisper together:

“It’s okay.”