Fear

My daughter Joy is the most ironic toddler because her favourite book is “Sadness,” from a popular children’s movie. We’ve been reading it for weeks and the character’s heavy sighs make my weirdo of a kid smile and giggle. This week, however, she’s been handing me “Fear,” and after a few days of feeling a weird, generalized melancholia, it has finally clicked in that this little genius is handing me my own problem to read out loud every night. So there it is: fear. Of what? Nothing in particular...and everything. I guess when you’ve experienced a worst case scenario- the one without the happy ending— it makes sense that you could come out of that afraid. Afraid of what the future has in store, afraid of what could happen, what may not happen, afraid of being not enough, or of being too much. Of failing, of leaving, of being left. Of change. There are a lot of rabbit holes I work hard to skirt around. But while turning this revelation over in my head I also stumbled across a reflection that I wrote many years ago, pre-worst case scenario; a different context but very familiar anxieties. And it’s amazing how fear sticks with us in our memory- it’s primal. I remember the day (7 years ago) about which I wrote this so clearly…

       “I can’t get out of this car. Physically, I couldn’t. I sat, frozen to the seat, feeling like I was drowning in a whirlpool of anxiety, the swirling waters manifesting in the tears that were rolling down my cheeks. If I can’t even get out of this car, how can I possibly do this thing? My flight was scheduled for boarding at 9:55pm and it was now closing in on 9. Sitting in the parking lot at terminal 1, in the car I had bought with my boyfriend almost 2 years before, all I wanted to do was tell him—now my husband—how sorry I was that I was having a complete breakdown. Knowing how hard this was on him too, how could I bestow my own misery upon him? It was just plain unfair. I had two similar, yet contradictory scenarios grasping hold of each hand, tugging my arms in opposite directions. Number one I followed through with the plan; check in, get on the plane and eleven hours later land in Santiago, Chile. A few hours after that board another plane, eventually touching down in my new home-base for the summer, Asunción, Paraguay. Why was this so terrifying for me? It was only the summer, and I wouldn’t be alone for the whole time. Besides, I’d been there before, last year. I knew what I was getting myself into. But last year I was only gone for two weeks, and I had the promise of a wedding to look forward to upon my return. Even still, why was it so different this time? I knew I would miss my husband terribly, but ever since we began dating I had gone away without him almost every summer—to Mexico, to Europe, or even just moving home to Toronto. But this year it was different because I was different. What confidence I had built up over my past adventures of independence had been splintered significantly and left me with a shameful sense of dependency.

     More shameful still, would be failing. Scenario two: I say forget it. Getting out of this car was too difficult, so I don’t. “Take me home.” I would say to my husband. I could insist and he would do it. Change my plans, think of a new project. Pray for academic forgiveness and start all over with my M.A. research. Tell my friends that I had tried, but my body just couldn’t handle the stress. No one would say a bad word— it would be support all around from my friends, family. But in my head they would say other things, about how I was weak, a big baby, didn’t even really try. Being a disappointment was even more terrifying than being alone across the world, sick or in pain and unable to get the help I needed. So what did I do, in the end? What any Western-raised middle-class 23-year-old being treated for anxiety in conjunction with a painful back injury would do: I swallowed an Ativan, willed myself to believe in its power to calm me down, and I got out of the car.”

      I remember this story as a profound moment in my life because it became a moment of triumph. I got out of that car. I walked through security. I got on that red eye. And I consider those months in Paraguay as a defining time in my life. I remember it with pride and fondness and gratitude.

In the children’s book, “Fear” makes a list of things he’s afraid of. And I can relate, I get it. God, the type A in me loves making lists. But I don’t want to list out my fears. I’d rather write out how I’m going to conquer them. Though I don’t even know where to begin. It feels like an equation that I don’t know how to solve. Me and math, right. This time it’s not so simple as getting on a plane. I don’t really know where to begin or where to go from here. There is no route to follow to get from point A to point B. I don’t know how the next few years will define me, and perhaps that is the true source of my anxiety. There is no horizon; just an endless sky above me and my feet below. And four little feet half a step behind.