What Fear Is

Some walks you have to take alone. ―Suzanne Collins, Mockingjay

I just want to share something about myself with everyone. . . I'm pretty fearless. I mean, I don't usually toot my own horn, but I mean, they're are really a lot of things that scare me. Bugs, the dark, public speaking, death, disease, heights, animals, needles. . .not even flying anymore. I don't fear being poor, I don't fear being plain, I don't fear being forgotten or lost. Apart from the fear of losing people I love, I don't really have any anxieties about the world...I don't know why but the older I have gotten, the easier it has been for me to transcend these fears.

There is one fear however, that it has been nearly impossible for me to conquer, and this thing terrifies me so much that it's something that I can't even name it to you.

In fact, here I am opening my heart to you, and I feel like I about to post a page from my diary on the Internet. Like I said, I don't have alot of fears, and I am not a generally secretive person - in fact I am quite open about my thoughts and feelings, and tend to share them often, as long as I believe that they will not offend or hurt anyone else.

Believe me, these fears that I have are totally justified. I could, very precisely and very exactly explain them to you - but I don't want to just yet. If you only knew -- and some of you do, you would understand. I am a brave person, I am a strong person, I have survived alot (See next post if you think I'm lying)  and I want you all to know that I am working very hard towards conquering this ongoing battle aganist fear. Not that I'm suffering, or losing or anything - in fact, sometimes I think that having  this fear is even the reason that I am so much more capable or rising above all those other common and normal phobias.

 I am telling you  this not for attention, not because I'm crying for help, but I guess because in a way I want to apologize. . .  I want to apologize if I have ever seemed like I was somehow unapproachable about this subject. It's not that I don't want to talk to know, it's not that I don't want your help, it's not that I don't want to change.

So please, if I am taking time to do something or to talk about something that involves this issue, which may come easily to you, (and believe me, I know it isn't true, it seems like it comes easy to everyone but me) please, please, please. . . have patience with me.  Please know that I love you all to pieces and all I want is to make everyone around me as happy as I am.

Just think of it this way - if someone held your hand through every fear you had - or through every bit of pain you ever experienced, you would never really get over that fear. The pain might go away, but in the end it would just be you and that person, that person always protecting you and never having the freedom to let go, or you still in pain, and protecting that person from knowing how scared or hurt you were. Yet they'd still be holding on, afraid to let you go, but unable to live their own lives.

Sometimes people hold your hand too tight, so tight you know they're scared and it forces you to be even scarder. The truth is, I'm not in pain. I'm just scared, and when people hold my hand so tight, so tight it hurts - it's hard for me to tell them to let go. This hand holding and pushing and sighing, and waiting - it doesn't work for anybody outside of a labor and delivery suite.

I want to be stronger. I want to to let go of fear and embrace the rush that comes from exposure - to reap the beauty of what letting go means.  I can't do this with help from anyone. I'm working on letting go, but it's gonna take time, and I'm gonna have to do it on my own.  Just like Katniss said in The Hunger Games - "some walks you just have to take alone." Please don't worry about me, I have my own bow and arrow. I can be the own hero of my life, and knowing this, makes me happier than ever - and telling you this. . .  just made me ever slightly more brave.

And the day came when the risk to remain tight in a bud was more painful than the risk it took to blossom. ― Anaïs Nin