Infinite fears

I, like everyone else in the world, have fears that keep me sometimes up at nights. Just like this night I guess...

I've been told that fear is a part of living and that it is an emotion that has to be felt in a certain moments when I am dealing with situations that could be dangerous or harmful physically or psychologically and that it is a powerful but natural emotion that I have inside of me. We have inside of us.

Little do I know the meaning of that, life has taught me that fear can be more than just an instant emotion, it is actually more than that. When I was young, I was fearless. I remember I used to constantly play with fire. For instance, I used to swipe matchsticks. I knew it was dangerous, especially for kids my age but I did it anyway. I wanted to learn how to do it because sometimes it wouldn't work and the matchstick just got unusable after many tries. I was never afraid of getting burned or harming myself in any way using the matches, I was so confident that I had it under control.

As I grow up, fears multiplied and the struggle becomes real. I remember I lost a friend to death in ninth grade. He had an accident and passed away. I've never felt that feeling before. As much as I can recall, I've never had the fear of losing someone before that moment. It was the first time that I've realized I developed a fear of being alone. Technically, I wasn't alone. I had family and friends support. However, it just wasn't enough for me to get through. I wasn't aware of what's happening to me back then, all I can remember is I've changed to become a super energetic teenager. I was dealing with anger, rage and outburst all at once. You know people didn't really appreciate me for who I was, especially physically. Everybody around me made me believe that wearing braces is just disgusting and made jokes about me. I never talked to anyone about that, but it got into me. So the fear of not being beautiful enough or if I can say "not meeting the beautiful criteria" made me sick and got me thinking of what can I do to avoid this terrible feeling.

I had developed another fear too when I was about to get into college : the fear of not being accepted and throw all my education years in the trash. The thing about fear is it keeps you asking the same questions in every important step of your life. The questions are mainly : "What is you failed?", "What if you didn't appreciate it?", "Are you sure you want that?", "What if it ends up badly?", "What if it's not what you thought it was?", "How about taking an extra time to re-evaluate your decision?", "What if you're not qualified to do that?"... Sometimes, I just get overwhelmed because, I don't really know all the answers. I don't really have all the answers right now and that's the point, I realized that if I don't take the risk and step forward, I'll probably never know some of the answers. Thus, they'll keep coming back again and again.

You know, it takes gut to really push yourself out of your comfort zone and get yourself into challenges. Not many people are willing to do that, it all depends on one's character. Fear has eventually taught me that it's okay to go through difficult and unexpected situations but what am I afraid of exactly?

Mostly, I am afraid of suffering. I always had this quote in my head : "Expecting the best but accepting the worst". So even if my expectations were high, I managed to lower them to skip the bad surprise in the end. This is just a kind of hallucination I had in my head : the fact that if you expect less, you're going to get more every time and it's amazing. Worst case : you're getting what you've less expected. I'm sorry to break it to you but it's not a proper way of thinking things out. It's to all intents and purposes a bad habit.

All I did up until now is escaping fear in order to skip "pain" when things don't go the way I planned. This just got me into a constant skeptical mood. My point is : fear is not as bad as it sounds. It's manageable. It teaches you that in this life, you won't get always a steady pace and happy endings. You'll certainly get some, but you'll have to go through a lot before you get there. Just remember that if the things you were at once afraid of turn into a real nightmare, don't let yourself drown and fade into it. Allow yourself a break every now and then to overview your experience and give yourself a little evaluation starting of : "Is there something I can do to prevent this from happening in the future?".

Last but not least, you're a human being and mistakes are inevitable as well as fear. Remember that you have a full control of your emotions, fear included. As a matter of fact, you're always in control as long as that's what you want. You are the leader, don't hide it, don't act like it's not there just face it. You are strong enough to get through those matters you're afraid of and nothing can stop you from achieving anything or stepping into big deals.

- K