Naming Fears: A Few Short Stories
Nelson Mandela once said: “May your choices reflect your hopes, not your fears.”
I’ve always been one who strives to have my choices reflect my hopes. I’m not one to back down from a challenge or choose the easy path. And after completing an MBA, studying halfway across the world, getting divorced, and moving to a brand new country, people have told me the choices I’ve made are brave and courageous. But choosing to hope doesn’t mean the fears ever really go away. It just means that when we catch ourselves getting too consumed by our fears, we must take a step back and name them.
In doing so, we can weaken their grip, and at the same time, feel a little less alone. We can take comfort in knowing that these named fears are the same fears that others have to face too, although they might appear in slightly different disguises.
***
“What simple and
ordinary lives we live,
underneath the shadows
of projection screen
artists”
― Phil Volatile
***
Rumi the cat runs into the house, leash trailing behind him, and happily bounds into another room. Something has caught his attention. We need to head out to grab some groceries. The supermarket is just a ten minute walk away. We leave Rumi behind, his leash still attached to his harness. A few minutes into our walk to the supermarket, I stop. I need to go back, I say. I need to remove the leash from his collar. What if he trips and slides down the staircase and the leash gets hooked somewhere and we come back to find a dead cat hanging from a leash? It doesn’t matter that Rumi is a cat and cats don’t trip down staircases. It doesn’t take very long for my mind to race to the worst-case scenario. I ask Alan to go on ahead to the store, and say I’ll meet him there later. I arrive home, unhook Rumi’s leash from his harness, and breathe a sigh of relief. Just as I remove his leash, I look at the harness still wrapped around his body. An image of his harness getting caught on something and choking him as he tries to wrestle free flashes through my mind.
***
We are at a water park. I love thrill rides and adrenaline rushes because for those few moments, I feel alive and free, unencumbered by the worries that usually keep my mind racing at lightning speed. We climb up the stairs to go down a tall slide. Water splashes around our feet as we walk up the wet stairs, which are coated firmly with a non slip surface that grips tightly at our bare feet while we walk. Still, I can’t help but think, What if I trip? What if someone trips? I see it happening in slow motion, a shin hitting the sharp edge of a step, a head crashing into the corner of the railing. After the water slide, we plan to jump off a diving board but I back out at the last minute. I’m still thinking about accidents involving stairs, water, and slips.
***
I watch as the ticks appear. One tick, then two. The message was sent. I wait for the two ticks to turn blue. Seconds pass. Then minutes. Perhaps he’s doing something else. Finally, they turn blue. I wait for a reply. A few more minutes pass. My eyes dart back and forth between the last three messages I sent. Did I come across as too interested? I wonder. Should I have played a little more coy? Is he doing something more interesting than talking to me? The status bar changes. “Typing…” it reads. The three dots are animated so they appear one after the other. The typing status disappears. I count the minutes. One minute passes. Two minutes. Three. The typing status appears again. Is he agonizing over what to compose? Or is he flicking through his phone and absently-mindedly trying to multitask while talking to someone else? Do I sound desperate? Is he just not as into me as I’m into him? When he finally replies, even though I know exactly what I want to say next, I count off the minutes in between each message to match his pace. Three minutes between each message. I can’t look too eager.
***
I wave goodbye at the train pulls out of the station, looking longingly out of the window. He’s still standing there on the platform, watching the train disappear from sight. My chest feels tight, like someone’s wrapped a fist around my heart. I realize I’ve stopped breathing and draw in a deep breath. Will we never meet again? What if this is the last time we see each other? What if I never meet anyone this good again? Am I doomed to spend the rest of my life comparing every guy I meet to him? I think about the future that awaits me back home. I’ve just graduated, and I have commitments to fulfill back home. Commitments that will keep me in the same place for a few years, at the very least. They say right person, wrong time. But isn’t the right person at the wrong time still the right person? Even if I meet someone at the right time, will I ever feel this way again? How many people get to feel this way more than once in a lifetime? Am I asking for too much?
***
I smile and excuse myself from dinner after a long day of meetings I’d already committed to. I grab my phone and search “late night pharmacy”. There’s 20 minutes to closing time, and the nearest one is 15 minutes away. It will take some time to park my car. I grab my keys and race to my car. Your life is over if you get pregnant, a voice in my head tells me. I picture myself ten kilograms heavier. I hear a baby screaming and I see its face, red and flushed, tears streaming down its cheeks. But a baby is not an “it”. I know this in my head, all life has value. But the first, instinctive reaction I feel tells me otherwise. I see a house filled with tacky bright primary colors and plastic everything — plastic utensils, plastic chairs, plastic toys, plastic mats — all in clashing, bright colors. I get out of my car, slam the door behind me, and speed walk to the pharmacy. The fluorescent light illuminating the pharmacy sign glows against the dark night. I push the door open, walk to the counter, and ask for an Escapelle. Now is not the right time, I think to myself. At the very same second, another thought flashes through my mind. Will it EVER be the right time to give up my life, my identity, my body?
***
“You must be the person you have never had the courage to be. Gradually, you will discover that you are that person, but until you can see this clearly, you must pretend and invent.”
― Paulo Coelho
