There are moments in my life that I remember distinctly. Most of them are small, happy memories surrounding huge ones, like riding my bicycle around the block when my grandpa had a heart attack. I was seven. It was almost 7:30. I can still hear my grandma’s screams. Her desperate cries for help. And the sirens and the horns. And all the neighbors whispering. And then this sudden hush, a deadening silence that fell over the neighborhood. But the worst part: I can still remember that I did nothing.
I can’t forget moments like those. They are forever embedding in my memory. Perhaps it is fear, fear of being nothing, that makes me want to run. To escape. To simply disappear.
Unfortunately, fear seems to dominate my life. I’m afraid of many things. I’m afraid of death. I’m afraid of being wrong. Of being right. Of being afraid. But, mostly, as I look around, surrounded my millions of artsy, talented people, I’m afraid I will wake up one day and I won’t be able to write one coherent word. It’s stupid, I know, but at least it’s mine, and in this life, not many things are. And everyone says you shouldn’t be afraid. Maybe it’s true, what they say. Maybe they know better than I. Maybe I’m wrong in being afraid, but I don’t know how to stop it. I can’t stop it. To me, fear is safe. In some twisted way, fear is my security blanket. I find it everywhere. It is there, holding my hand when no one else will.
And it may seem impossible that such a fearless exterior hides someone filled with fear, but I’m living proof. Underneath all the layers is a whole different person. Underneath, fear and uncertainty reign. I cling to things that are common. Things that have always seemed to be there, that’s what I keep close. I don’t exactly know why. It’s instinctive. It all seems too familiar to let go of.
And I know I’m not the only person to cling to fear as tightly as tough it were a life jacket and I were drowning. I know this, but I don’t. Perhaps in my mind, where logic has some degree of control, I am one in a million who holds her fear next to her heart, but anywhere else—everywhere else—I am all alone. I am the little 7-year-old girl who was so afraid of what was going to happen that I didn’t make things happen.
My grandpa died, June 27th, 1992.
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