Fear

Holy shit am I well acquainted with fear. Fear in my life has fueled or continues to fuel anxiety, depression, suicidality and a sense of hopelessness. And don’t get me started on hypervigilance. I am very uncomfortable with uncertainty, and if you look for it, you can find it everywhere. And find it I did. Admittedly, I was given a disadvantage at the start. I was raised in a strict religion(which is more honestly a cult in a lot of ways) and fear of god, sin, hell, etc. was fed to me steadily for my entire childhood and teenage years. My parents unwittingly taught me fear of vulnerability and relying on others. I lived my life afraid for so long I didn’t even know it. I couldn’t conceive of any other way to be. I didn’t open up to anyone about my inner world, and no one around me opened themselves up to me. It has had me in such a vise grip that I am still presently discovering the extent of the damage. Pretty damn comprehensively, is my assessment.

To me, fear is the enemy of a lot of things. It counteracts peace, security, love, and life itself. To be blunt and harsh, I was so ruled by fear that I was a shadow of myself. A whisper, if you will. It wasn’t so constant that I had no enjoyment of life, but time and time again the good parts were tarnished by my worries that my enjoyment wouldn’t last. Or that the people in my life didn’t actually care about me. That I was always last on their mind or that I was one mistake away from being rejected and abandoned. Fear ruined much of my life. It prevented connections with people I looked up to. It killed my drive for bettering myself and my future, or learning new skills, even graduating college.

Pretty bleak, right? I want to write about it seriously because I cannot overstate how horrible it is to live in fear. And by no means am I saying I have suddenly overcome fear or even that all that much has changed. As I am right now, I am merely becoming more aware of when fear informs a thought or an assumption. It pops up alllll the damn time. Much of it I can recognize as irrational and overblown. That I’m not so replaceable or disposable in people’s lives, or that the future doesn’t have to all be scary. It’s frankly stunning how quick my first thought or reaction to something comes and goes in seconds, and I usually don’t catch it at all. But I am developing my ability to see it. To expose it and challenge it. I’ve had enough success thus far to say that it’s working. It had 30 years to worm its way into me, and it may well take more than my lifetime to undo it. But the undoing has begun, and I don’t ever plan on going back to the pervasive void that is a life of fear.