The Ebb and Flow of Fear

There are fears that you can confront, and there are fears that linger throughout you life, occasionally rearing their heads. I figure if I really wanted to, I could conquer my phobia of spiders. Hypothetically, someone could fasten my arm down with titanium steel, pry open my clammy palm, plop a tarantula down, and wait patiently while I scream my way toward acceptance. Hypothetically, sure - but no thanks. There are some fears I'm more than happy to keep. But this spider thing of mine, it's more childish than anything else. A true fear is something that goes beyond the creepy crawlies, it comes from the place where you harbor all the worries you have about who you are, how you act, and what you want. It's something that impedes your life, and lessens the quality of it.

I like things that I'm afraid of, and I'm afraid of the things I like. I've never had a bad experience with the ocean; I've never turned my back on it and had a surprise wave pull me under. I've never had a run in with some sort of finned monster that left me down an appendage, or any other traumatic experience that would make me afraid of the sea. Actually, I did have a bit of a scare with some sort of fish that usually attaches itself to sharks, but other than causing a few surprised yelps, it was hardly harrowing. In any case, while I've never had any horrific encounter with the ocean, I've always been wary of it. Things like rip tides, sand bars, even the fictional sand sharks my uncle thoroughly convinced me of, they've kept me on my toes around the ocean, as if the one time I'm not paying attention to it, that's when it'll get me. I've made it a sentient thing, a being with intent, emotions and desires of its own.

The ocean and its powers are mythic, eternal, so completely inhuman, it reminds us constantly that it is clearly not our element. Having grown up in northern California, nearly every school trip to an aquarium involved standing beside the arching jagged jaw bones of a great white shark that once paced our coast lines, looking for the right seal or unruly third grader. That's what Mr. Bishop said anyway, and we all believed him. When you're a kid, you believe the stories grown ups told you about the sea, and when you' re older, the sea makes you feel like a child. Its alien vastness makes anyone feel like a cowed third grader - it's bigger than you, it's older than you, it knows better than you and nothing you could do could stop it. Here the crux of my wariness of the ocean is revealed: it leaves me vulnerable because I can't control it.

I could confront my fear of spiders, but something as elusive as a fear of losing control, that doesn't just pop up when you see something scuttle underneath your couch. It shows up in your relationships with the people you love and even more with the people you want to love. A true fear of losing control doesn't concern what route the taxi takes back to Brooklyn, or which table the maitre d' seats you at. Vulnerability and control are twisted sisters who are my long time companions. The fear of being exposed leaves me desperately grabbing for the upper hand in a situation so I can made sure I'm covered on all sides. A fear of losing control is about dropping carefully constructed shields of humor or apathy. It's not about riptides or big sharks; it's about being vulnerable enough to admit I need someone, anyone.

Nothing scares me more than the possibility that someone might kick me when I'm down, so I've tried my hardest to never offer the opportunity. When my mother was diagnosed with cancer, I was furious that I couldn't solve her disease like a problem, that I couldn't argue with it until it conceded my point and left her alone. Like the high tide, cancer just slowly but steadily inched its way in our lives, until I'd forgotten what life was like without it. As angry as I was that I couldn't simply force cancer out of my mother's body and out of our lives, and I was equally and selfishly furious that people around me could tell that I was falling apart. While I could handle being the girl at school whose mother was "ill," being the girl who burst into tears in the halls was not something I was willing to endure. After I'd shown my cards, I wouldn't be able to control how people saw me. Anyway, pain should be private, I was convinced, and showing my pain was not only weak, it was self-centered. After all, I wasn't the one slowly dying.

It's been five years since my mother died, and every day since I've been reminded of how futile all my struggles were to stop that from happening. While I'd been forced to acknowledge that I couldn't control everything, the fear of vulnerability still looms in my life. How does one confront such a fear? Only recently did I realize that I couldn't make myself give up my shroud of invulnerability; I couldn't create a situation where I could let go of my emotions for an allotted period of time, and then carefully climb back into my poised shell, just like I couldn't make myself need a particular somebody in my life, or make someone need me in theirs. But something happened: I've had a break though, and it's given me hope that I can lay down this burdensome fear. One muggy summer night, I cried in front of someone. I was frustrated and hurt and instead of shrugging it off or hightailing it like I usually do, I stood in front of someone who wasn't a family member or a friend who might as well be, and I cried for the first time since I followed my mother's coffin down the aisle. I felt foolish and weak, but at least I was feeling something other than the comfortable numbness that settles in after too many forced hakuna matatas. I may have hated it and eventually fled to the nearest subway station, but the important thing was that I let it happen at all. I believe it was Bob from "What About Bob," who said: "Baby steps."

A true fear holds you in a thrall, convincing you that you cannot exist without its stringent guidance. Whether it's a fear of vulnerability or control, or maybe a fear of failure or judgment, whatever it is that keeps you on your guard, the power of a fear is lies in its ability to make fearlessness seem impossible. That's why when you have a break through, when you let someone see you, red-nosed, blurry-eyed and hiccupping hopelessly on a street corner on a summer's night, it's important to mark that as a moment when you were stronger than your fear. No matter how high the tide gets, it will eventually go out again.

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