What we feel when we feel fear

Late last week, I had something of an epiphany. Epiphanies for me are quite small. They are things like, “the supermarket is just like an indoors version of the outside, but with biscuits, which you love” and “you are probably not going to fly off the world and into space unless something drastic happens with poles and space-time”.

My recent epiphany was just that I could probably drive to my kids’ other house without freaking out. I haven’t been there for months, due to craziness and unwillingness. And look, mostly unwillingness. But my ex-husband has broken his collarbone and can’t drive, so my options are to go and get the children from his house, or listen to him complaining ad infinitum and not see the children at all, which is a nice idea because it’s like a holiday, but also surprisingly lonely after a time.

It sounds silly, when written in sentences. He lives about four kilometres from my house. I have to drive up one road, turn right into another road, then do a short veer to the left. But in 2013, when I had a nervous breakdown and my eyes fell out of my face and into a large pond, the place where he lives became a big problem for me. I could go all around it, past it, under it, over it, but not through it. I know ‘trigger’ is a bit of a fun HBO anxiety buzzword, but the reality is that his entire suburb became a trigger for me. A heart-stopping, throat-crushing, confidence-smashing trigger.

But last week, I decided to do it anyway. I was so afraid. I felt like I couldn’t breathe. I felt certain I would collapse at the wheel and go crashing into six other cars that would be full of ducklings and they would all die, and I would have to live with that knowledge forever. I drove down the road and turned right and drove up another road and then made a slight detour and then did a u-turn and then it was raining so I veered left and eventually I was in his street and this is what I was thinking: “oh fuck oh fuck oh mother of christ what am I doing I can’t go in this street who do I even think I am oh god okay here is the house okay I have stopped and now the kids are coming out and look how cute they are okay the door is open and now it is closed and we are still alive let’s get the fuck out of this street before my head literally caves in oh god we did it this is amazing let’s go to the ice-cream shop I can’t believe I did it I love everything and everyone is this heaven?”

And then we were done. And it was done.

Here’s a thing I’m going to say: fear is wonderful.

Fear is wonderful because on the other side of fear is relief. On the other side of fear is hopefulness. On the other side of fear is power. Fear is not a feeling about something, it is a passage through something. In letting my fears consume and contain me, I had forgotten that I could even push through a fear. I sat in my living room and thought, well, I am afraid of that thing, which means I can’t do it. In truth I meant, well, I am afraid of that thing, and it’s easier to be afraid of it than to travel with the fear. Because fear is not a wall but a kind of thick caramel.

I think we feel fear on a curve, like this:

The distance between the before and the during is much less than the distance between the during and the after. That enormous plummet into gladness can only happen if you spend a little time at the apex. If you hover at the expectation of fear (which is what I do, so you know, at least we can hang out), you never get the period of immense relief. Worrying about fear will always keep you elevated above your normal fear levels.

(My normal fear levels are like “is a crocodile chasing me right now?” every minute of the day.)

Here’s a secret for you, my anxious friends: people who don’t feel fear don’t get that crash into weightlessness. Perhaps the only thing about anxiety for which we can be grateful is its propensity to be over. If a period of acute anxiety is like being sucked into a vortex of poison and screaming, then the period afterwards is like bathing in a giant cannoli. I postulate that it is the most terrifyingly glorious feeling a person can have.

It is made of many things, the after. First, it is the knowledge that you can, after all, do the thing. You were so scared! You nearly pissed on an old lady at a bus stop! But then you did it! You did the thing. Secondly, it is the knowledge that it is over. The thing is done. You don’t have to do the thing again right now. The more recently you have done the thing, the more time until the next time you have to do the thing. And thirdly, you know you’ve earned a bloody great reward for doing the thing. My major fear is open spaces, so once I’ve done the thing and thought about how the thing is done, I like to go to the nearest book shop or patisserie and buy everything they have and even things they don’t have, and especially stuff with custard in it.

The last bit is important because I do that even when I fail. When I fail to do the thing, I still buy stuff with custard. I eat it on the side of the road while thinking about how bad I feel. I think about how I failed, how I was so afraid. I think about how I don’t deserve to eat the thing with custard. Then I buy more things with custard and eat those, too.

If you look at my science graphic above, you’ll see that the amount of fear you feel, on average over the period of time it takes to do the thing, is the same. You feel a greater acuteness of fear while you’re doing it, and then much, much less afterwards. Or, you feel fear while you’re trying to do it, then after you’ve bitched out (frankly), your fear level drops, but not as much. The fear of doing the thing remains. The fear of failing at it again next time is strengthened. The knowledge that You Can’t because It’s Too Hard is reinforced.

This is not a revelation, but as I said, my epiphanies are quite small. What I mean to say is, you wouldn’t even have the opportunity to feel this way if you didn’t fear. If you could look at a mountain and think, “well, I can climb that, obviously”, maybe you wouldn’t be brave. If you thought about crossing the ocean in a canoe and you were fearful because frankly that is lunacy, you would require courage in order to do it. You would feel the fear, then a bunch more fear, then maybe a bit less fear, then AMAZEMENT AND WONDER. I DID IT. AGAINST THE ODDS.

You need to have “odds” to be able to feel the majesty that is doing something against them.

When I drove to my ex-husband’s house and literally shoved my children into the car like bags of garbage, I felt so tough. I could have gone from his house to the moon, I was so tough. I felt as though I had, for a few minutes, given myself permission to be a person. Thanks, fear.