Fear, a reflection

ania

I feel like crying right now, but I don’t. If I do, I won’t ever stop. It’s so much easier if I did that, if I faced what I’m feeling. It’s hard to put a mask into place, to keep it up, to be happy, smart, aware.

But every second I droop a little more. I’m losing track of my thoughts and have nothing to focus on. Nothing seems big enough to worry about. That’s a lie. Everything is worrying at my mind, taking little chips of what I am and replacing it with a black nothing. If I descend into darkness any faster I’ll be gone by week’s end.

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Babies don’t know fear. You aren’t born afraid of the world—it’s a learned behavior. I’m not sure when I learned life was scary, but I’ve never forgotten. The lesson has stuck with me in too many strange ways.

As a child, I viewed the life of an adult as something wondrous. To be able to make decisions, to have a purposeful job, to drive, to have children… It seemed too much, and I knew I could never attain it. Yet it wasn’t failure I feared.

My mind, the perfect morbid mind of a child, conceived a bizarre scenario. One that was simple and efficient, but brutal as such things are. When I am seventeen, I’m going to die. Not by my own hand, but by the hand of Fate. I will not linger, last, or leave an impression. My strings will be cut and my peers shall quietly forget me as they grow and absorb the world, and find more things to fear.

It didn’t seem like something to fear when I developed the hypothesis. Just a strange, acceptable fact, another chapter in the sad story of my life, it wrote itself into my book.

Yet every year I grow older, fear grabs another foothold in my life. I don’t even think it’s death I’m afraid of. It’s just, if it happens, I’ll be gone without doing anything. I develop dreams side by side with the dread, and it’s them I fear losing.

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I feel so silly writing this, exposing to the world my dark side. Rather pathetic, isn’t it? I don’t hide evil, but instead the fact I’m a sniveling girl child.

But I can’t shake off the idea that I have a point. Each time I go back onto hydrocodone, I realize that my body is betraying me and I’m not yet twenty. Things aren’t life threatening, but that doesn’t mean they aren’t wrong, that they aren’t scaring me out of my wits.

My personal nightmare has been developing for a decade, and now I’m beginning to live it. Things would be easy if I fell into them, let the wave of life carry me. Or maybe the only way they would be easy is if I had a good year, if I felt as fine and gay as I did two short years ago.

But it’s been blow after blow, and I’m barely standing. My light grew and expanded for awhile, but now I see it flickering. People still believe in me, previous returned faith making them see the lamp going strong as usual. Only I feel the icy touch of the wind, making my open wounds ache with fresh bite.

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You want fear to be something tangible, like in the movies. A monster (maybe even a human one) lurks in the shadows, but you have the music to warn you even if the heroine and hero lack any form of brains to force them to wise up.

In my reality fear has become something less than real. It’s gotten to were I don’t truly feel it anymore. Once it has become a constant fact, it bleeds to the edge of the conscious mind. During the day, awake and moving, it’s hard to believe I’ve ever been scared.

I hope it’s the same way for you, that you’ve learned that fear exists, but that it’s so simple to block.

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My problem isn’t going away, isn’t floating into the edges of my life. I can’t stay aware, I’m too tired. My defenses are down and I’m just floating through the motions.

If I sleep, clowns will eat me.

But if I never sleep, then I’ll never be able to wake up again. And once I don’t wake up, I’m gone. Lost to the blackness, trapped in my fear, dead at seventeen. Maybe if I wasn’t so dumb, not now, not then, I wouldn’t be so afraid now.

It’s too late for that, and all I can do is pull on a mask, make a smile.

Really, I’m lying. I feel great, just wanted to see how I could make you react. Had you going, didn’t I?