My Year with Fear

I'm one week away from 28 and a few days ago, I started thinking about what sort of "gift" I could give myself this year. I hadn't gifted myself anything before in honor of a birthday, but after this past year, I thought maybe it was time to start a new tradition to celebrate.

I looked at rings (first diamond, perhaps? No, waste of money), new clothes I've wanted for years, inspiration for new tattoos or hair colors — something to commemorate this oncoming trip around the sun. Something to coddle and soothe my shaky soul. Something to commemorate the person I’ve been missing most this year.

Myself.

I wasn't particularly sad on my 27th birthday, but I felt an odd sort of shift right away. It was as if someone opened the door to an unknown, forgotten basement in a home I’d lived in for 27 years. I stepped through the doorway to inspect the new space, but my past self hesitated — she didn’t want to explore the basement.

She knew something I didn’t because as soon as I crossed the threshold and descended down the stairs, the door slammed behind me. I was locked in and quickly realized I wasn’t alone.

Something (rather, someone) lived down here and he was eager to meet me.

He introduced himself as Fear and told me it was time the two of us spent some time together. I respectfully declined his offer, but soon realized it was never up for negotiation.

And thus began my 27th year — my year with Fear.

Fear burrowed his way through my gray matter, and my past self, the one I'd come to accept and mildly love through years of practice, was off dancing and dawdling in our old home — a space we’d cultivated together.

I was angry — angry that she didn’t come looking for me. Angry that she never even knocked or asked how I was doing through the cracks in the door. It was as if she were glad to leave me behind, glad to go off and do her own thing without me.

Living down in the basement made “real life” difficult most months and damn near impossible many days.

I recall a time in July — my partner and I were watching the Olympics and I was going through my silent, nightly panic attack on the couch. I'd taken a shower hours before, but I was still sitting in my towel, huddled into the cushions, trying to focus on gymnastic routines and swim finals while my chest tightened and my heart fluttered.

This happened every night, but this night in particular, I was able to begin interpreting the inner workings of my invaded mind. I finally told my partner about the basement, my “roommate,” and my inability to open the door and escape.

I sobbed, feeling a brief release from the emotional catatonia, a started to vocalize how it was as if everyone I loved, everything I once enjoyed, was on the other side of the door, but I could not, no matter how desperately I pulled at the door handle, get out. I couldn't connect, couldn't feel love nor give it. It was the most terrified I've been to date — the isolation of being next to someone I love but not being able to connect as if being pulled by a stronger hand.

Expounding my feelings provided relief, but it never lasted. Fear was the first to greet me when I woke and the only company I kept in the middle of the night as he’d made sure to rob me of sleep, as well.

In an attempt to evict Fear, I wrote down all of my fears one day (a recommendation from my therapist — yes, I'm grateful to have seen one throughout this time) and soon realized I wrote down nearly every aspect of life.

My job, my health, my weight, my relationship, my past, my present, my future — I covered nearly every topic and found myself coming to the grossly hyperbolic (yet genuinely truthful) conclusion that I, in this period of my life, was afraid of everything.

Fear had done his job — he’d painted my brain with all his favorite colors and even signed his name on the bottom corner.

But he wasn’t done just yet. He mentioned one day that he’d invited a friend — a cousin, really. He assured me we hadn’t met before, but he couldn’t wait to introduce us. After the past eight months, I was genuinely thrilled to meet someone new.

Nothing could be worse than the time I’d spent with Fear. Maybe this was my reprieve, a sort of reward for refusing to break. Refusing to bend to the mental toll. Refusing to give up.

I soon realized upon meeting this new guest that Fear had been a warm-up — a mere opening act. No, he was not inviting someone to liven up the place…he’d invited my own personal boogeyman.

He’d invited Finality.

Before meeting Finality, I'd never feared death — or at least not any more than the average person. I've always felt intrigued and entirely aware of my own mortality, if anything. Isn’t it what gives life meaning, anyway?

But that's easy to say when you're in your 20s and death feels far, far away. It's not until you start realizing that your life, everything you've done, and every choice you've ever made, is set in stone.

Blame it on my fascination (and intense obsession) with stories, but I’d always envisioned living several different lives. Realistically, of course, I knew this to be an impossible feat, but my remaining sliver of childish wonder anticipated living countless lives beyond my wildest imagination.

No matter how dark the present felt in my previous 26 years, I always knew I could dream up a different reality. I dreamt it up so often I’d practically become a full-time resident in different worlds of my own making.

A world where I had friends at school. A world where my parents loved each other. A world where I was successful. A world where people liked me. A world where I was important. A world that felt like home. A world where I was comfortable.

Finality stripped me of these worlds. She crumpled each of them up one by one, destroying my remaining safe spaces and eroding the boundary between me and reality.

Her visit was brief, but the impact was permanent.

Those were my worlds, so carefully crafted and intentionally impenetrable, and she disintegrated them right before my eyes. On bad days, I often fear I disappeared along with them. When things don’t feel so heavy, I’m able to see the benefit of her destruction — the uncomfortable “gift” she bestowed upon me.

For, it wasn’t until these “worlds” were gone that I realized I’d loved each one more than my own life. The one I’m actively living. The one I can’t stop time for. The one that I cannot do over again.

And that’s when I knew something I’ve previously denied myself from admitting. My year with Fear — it wasn’t a punishment.

27 was the year that saved my life. I’d been completely obsessed with daydreaming about living someone else’s life that I’d neglected my own. I ignored what made me happy, I failed to share what I needed to feel loved and safe. I slept on my own dreams and ignored my body’s signals.

Fear and Finality showed me how dangerous it is and will be if I continue to put myself on the backburner. They forced me to look in the mirror and realize that they weren’t the strangers, the “unwanted” visitors — I was.

As for that "past self" running through the house? She was the survival-mode version — the one that lived in a permanent dream world and longed for a different life. Though worthy of love and acceptance, she wasn’t ready to learn the truth. It would hurt her too much and she still needs protection.

And while the basement door unlocked a few days ago, I suppose in anticipation of 28, I find myself scared to return to her. What if she isn’t there? Or worse…what if she is?

I suppose time will tell. Until then, I know this to be true:

While I still don’t recognize myself in the mirror, I have a feeling 28 will change that. I have hope, in fact.

And after a year without hope, I can honestly say it just might be the best gift I could have ever given myself.