FEAR!
“… the only thing we have to fear is fear itself –
nameless, unreasoning, unjustified terror which paralyzes …”
(Franklin D. Roosevelt, First Inaugural Address, 1933)
OMG, isn’t that enough?!
It’s true that FDR didn’t stop there. He went on for hundreds of words more in his quest to give hope, courage and backbone to a depression-pummeled people. By the end of his 20 minutes of rhetorical CPR, he’d transformed fear into an engine of resuscitation, leaving terror and paralysis in the metaphorical dust. Seen now on YouTube, it’s an electrifying feat.
I, on the other hand, usually stop at fear.
They say to face your fears to conquer them. Well, I face mine every day, because they give me no choice. But so far the conquering has flowed only from them to me. Nameless, unreasoning, unjustified they may be, but there they still are anyway.
As with most things, there’s probably a whole science of FEAR, intended to identify, analyze, classify, and ultimately tame it through rational examination and explanation. Of that, I know nothing. What I know is the cold, sickening, breath-sucking – yes, paralyzing – tsunami of it.
I suppose I can’t actually remember my first experience of fear. Maybe it had something to do with that first birth day – which I imagine to have included shrieks of pain, and epithets, somehow focused on me, and a thrusting out into a stark new world of cold and lights and slaps so unlike the aqueous serenity I’d known till then. What had I done to deserve this?
Or maybe it happened even before that. I’m told I started kicking early. Could fear have been why?
The first fear I do remember, though now almost as a nightmare, has to do with night and cold and terror outside, under the stars, and a raging alcoholic father. But I’ve written about that elsewhere; I won’t belabor it. Surely it hasn’t lingered through all these years.
There were the usual fears of childhood: that someone might steal my favorite toy; that monsters might grab me in the night; nuclear Armageddon. And then the fears of youth and young adulthood: that someone might steal my boyfriend; AIDS; nuclear Armageddon.
To every season there is a fear – or a clutch of them – but the fears haven’t so much replaced each other from one life season to the next, as accumulated, piled up one on top of the other, till by now I have almost a whole lifetime of fears to pick from all the time.
I’m not sure I’m getting more fearful as I get older, but I’m sure as hell not getting any less so. And as so many other things get sloughed off with age – ambition, libido, acquisitiveness, pecs – fear always seems to be there to fill the gaps.
These days I find myself focusing on the fears I used to associate with old age – the ones I now associate with MY age.
And so what are my fears now? I suppose I should say, my fears today, since they may be different tomorrow.
First, the fear of a shrinking world. I watched my mother’s world, never wide, dwindle to a padded lift chair in a living room, as the pain of a back twisted like a pretzel made moving excruciating. But even before the pain, her world had begun to narrow – as I see mine narrowing now, every time I question setting foot outside, for fear of … Who knows what? Something unreal, but real enough to keep the door shut too often. COVID didn’t help with that.
And I fear the loss of control – control of the functions of daily life – control of the functions, literally – control that allows us to live with the illusion of independence, the illusion of dignity. Control that may be an illusion itself, but a comforting one.
And I fear the prospect of dying old and alone, no children, no grandchildren, no kin of any kind to mask the reality that we all die alone, whether we do it young or old.
I know that dealing with such fears as these is what religion was invented for. So losing religion has opened a gigantic fear sinkhole for us – for ME that is; I’m really always only talking about me, though sometimes I try to feel less alone by saying “us.” The religion that I lost, or left, had me roasting for eternity in HELL because I’m gay, so how could I not leave it? But that's another story, for another day.
Without eternity would we know fear at all? Eternity’s such a long time for regret and retribution in case, you know, you put your money on the wrong side of the God/no God, Hell/no Hell, afterlife/no afterlife crap shoot.
As with so many things, Emily Dickinson got at this unflinchingly with her poem:
Those – dying then,
Knew where they went –
They went to God’s Right Hand –
That Hand is amputated now
And God cannot be found –
The abdication of Belief
Makes the Behavior small –
Better an ignis fatuus
Than no illume at all –
Now I'm coming to terms with the reality that nothing, as relates to me, is going to matter in the now not too distant future – a possibly depressing illume, I grant, but how can I argue with reality.
Is facing reality the same as facing fears? I don’t know. I do know that as a compassionate fellow human, I should at this point, offer hope – stiff-upper-lip encouragement to look on the brighter – or at least less glum – side of fear. So here goes. I’m looking at you, Fear. Prepare to be conquered. Fear not, fellow fearfuls. Whatever happens, the falling rain will still rustle the banana leaves in the courtyard, the birds will still chirp toward dawn, cool breezes will still waft through open windows in spring.
But soon, all for someone else. That’s just the way it is. What hope giveth, fear taketh away!
(Dear Friends: No need to worry about my mental state as you read this. It’s mostly tongue-in-cheek, except for the parts that aren’t. Anyway, I’m not flirting with offing myself, or anything like that. Just toying with some of the not so rosy facets of life. But thank you for your concern, if you did worry about me, even a little bit. I appreciate you and your watching out for my well-being. It almost makes the fear less frightening.)