Fear.

Fear.

It sounded simple to me when I was younger. I was afraid of bugs, particularly the large kinds. I had flipped on the lights in the garage at the age of eight only to find a mantis crawling onto my hand. I screamed and was afraid of the dark garage for a few years after that. 

I employed fear in horror stories that I wrote as a child. Mostly I indicated fear through invoking the narrator-voice to inform the reader that “Tom was afraid”. Sometimes I even got clever and subtle showing and telling at the same time “Tom shook... with fear.” 

After my father went to prison, I stopped writing stories. I understood a new kind of fear. Fear that the world would pull out from under me. This was fear of an arbitrary hand that could and would strike without reason or purpose at any moment. The consequences were as all encompassing as the motivations were vague. 

Oddly this fear filled me with the belief, though not necessarily the reality, that I was impervious to the normal ‘fears’ of day to day life. Whatever exactly those might be, as I had no full understanding of them. I thought the tragedies in my life made me an exception and so I spoke more plainly and bluntly, at the cost of many friendships. 

Armed with this false sense of freedom, I wrote again in college. This writing was less escapist and more confrontational. While the forms and goals were different the thrill and contentment were the same. When I wrote I was neither afraid nor anxious. I was simply quiet inside.

I took a year off after college to write, to become a writer (however one becomes a writer). Instead I was paralyzed by fear and anxiety and propelled back into graduate school. Graduate school and having a parent in prison are surprisingly similar experiences. Everything is stripped away from you as you are charged to use the full range of your coping skills just to survive the movements of that great invisible hand from above... or more specifically the descending thumb on that hand. 

And now I am free. Free of imprisoned childhoods and of the arbitrary tasks of graduate school. Some days I still am filled with the anxiety of vague high stakes deadlines and problems. Some days I sit down and I write and then I am quiet inside. 

But now, despite all my inner monologue of not being afraid, I am filled with dread over the consequences of what might spill out onto the page if I remove my restraints. This fear vacuums the floor twice a week and prepares gourmet meals. It takes three showers some days and reads about plastic bottles on the internet for four hours. Sometimes it just sits at a desk and clicks “refresh” on my e-mail over and over again. And as it does all this, I get louder and louder inside. Anxiety builds sometimes to a point of sleeplessness. I know what I have to do, I know what I want to do, but this feeling is standing in my way.

When I ask... what is it I’m feeling... all the noise inside pushes the word out clearly. 

Comments

[CarmenCarroll22]

I had a desire to start my own firm, but I didn't have enough of cash to do that. Thank heaven my colleague recommended to use the loan. So I took the short term loan and realized my dream.