My Fears

We always hear the fears of heights, spiders and darkness and that’s it. We never really hear the deep dark background of those fears. For example, the fear of heights is not just the distance between you and the ground. It is that lonely space that separates your body and the solid back-breaking cement that leaves you without a heartbeat. The cold wind that blows below your feet makes you feel your heart in your head - your stomach in your chest, feeling like there is no life inside you. This is what fear of heights feels like. It is not just acrophobia. Darkness, fear of darkness is just another fear that people throw around like its nothing but really, it’s about the secrets that lie within, the shivering feeling that someone is watching, that the darkness will overcome you. Your biggest worry might be the death feeling when the lights shut down leaving you all alone. Everything goes quiet, skittering, the leather soles hitting the floor, even your heartbeat—these are all sounds that freeze you in your steps. The deep dark secrets that are hidden in the figureless surroundings. Fear of spiders is probably the most heard of fear ever. Those creepy hairy legs that crawl suspiciously and dash rapidly around the deep dark corners of your house. The question that is held in your head and taunts you at night before you go to sleep, do they need eight eyes? What is the purpose and why?

Loneliness

The fear of how one might be left alone in solitude, left behind and unwanted. Even the thought of having to be alone horrifies me. As an example of how this feels like in my mind, imagine you have just walked home from your dull job that has no life or wonder, you pull out your keys from your pocket, jam it into the lock ready to swing the door in excitement to see your family after a long day of work but instead you open the door to just walk into your laugh-free zone where you eat, sleep and repeat day after day. All by your lonesome hoping that one day maybe just once you won’t have to live your life alone.

Anxiousness

Expressionless eyes looking up at you waiting for an answer, the guilt that you hold inside. Social anxiety or anxiety, in general, is a special kind of feeling that is unexplainable and impossible to understand unless you have felt it yourself. Imagine you are in the middle of your class and the teacher calls out your name, unlike most people that would just answer the teacher there on the spot, I feel a rush of frightfulness and those couple of seconds that have total silence leave me frozen in my seat and waiting for a hopeful answer of “Never mind, carry on with your day as you were.” But this is never the answer. The littlest things can affect your anxious brain, a little rude playful comment can change any of the feelings and emotions that are inside of you. The comment is locked inside your brain and will never leave, sometimes you may remember a remark that you heard that was directed to you from two years ago and don’t worry it is locked inside forever.

Overcoming

These fears haunt me, maybe they are a figment of my imagination but if I am honest, it is evident that many of us suffer from a variety of different fears. These fears are stuck with us and we can either find ways to overcome them or live with the fact that they will always be around us. The fact is, no matter how scary this sounds, you should overcome your fear by doing your fear. What I mean by this is by doing what you fear the most you, in turn, overcome it. If you are afraid of heights then go skydiving or bungee jumping. Go live life.