Loss Is My Greatest Fear
now I am not afraid to face it, but don’t tell me to be strong
When I was a little girl, too many things scared me. I could cry out some of those fears, but I couldn’t even dare to pronounce others. I thought I was going to figure out how to fight my inner demons growing up. Unfortunately, I discovered that fear never ends. We all are afraid, and we cannot help it.
What I realized is that you can’t fight against what terrifies you with boxing punches because it is not on the surface where it hides. Instead, the more you try to push it away, the more it crawls inside your soul, ultimately finding the darkest of places, and then..it’s done. You cannot throw it off anymore.
Why? You don’t know how to go down there. The way is too damn hard. It is easier to base your life on avoidance. Trying not to get hurt, trying not to be seen, trying not to lose people, and so on. You are avoiding fear, thinking ingenuously that you are scaring it off. Letting it swim profoundly into the sea of your unconsciousness, to drown it or, in the worst case, confound it. So it loses the way back up. Oh, you innocent creature!
How can you kill something that can potentially condition your life and choices by holding it, retaining it, not letting it go away? It is precisely in the depths of your mind and soul where Captain Fear can take control of the ship. Your ship.
Looking back, I see there were things I was afraid of but also was comfortable talking about. I have always had an irrational fear of all types of butterflies. I told everyone, laughed about it. I can’t say it evaporated. I still don’t like to have butterflies come near me, but this does not affect my life. I can live in peace with that phobia of mine.
I don’t know how fear of loss came to me. In the beginning, I thought death was my demon. The unvoiced word. Or sickness or hospital. I never imagined dealing with any of them without seeing myself torn apart.
I was born and raised in a beautiful crystal bubble, with my mother-soulmate, my loving father, a grandmother who brought me up since year 0, and an uncle who loved me to the stars and back without any real reason. I was privileged and..petrified.
I did not want to lose any of these. My life, the people I loved, my mind, my logical thoughts, friendships, time. The list piled up infinitely. There were days you thought being alone and stupid was the lost paradise. Not to love, not to care, not to think. And the anxiety you were feeling would be gone.
I started to see Loss as my enemy. The one thing you should never mention nor think about. Hoping it doesn’t remember to come after you someday. But it does. It always does…
In October, I lost my mom. Two weeks before my birthday. A month before that, we never thought we were going to lose her. She had been seriously sick for some time, and she went through a complex surgery, but she overcame it feeling extremely well for 3 months. Then things got hard. Really hard. She could not make it.
One day, I remembered a quote I loved from Memoirs of a Geisha: ‘At the temple, there is a poem called “Loss” carved into the stone. It has three words, but the poet has scratched them out. You cannot read loss, only feel it’.
I can now say I have experienced all the losses I dreaded apart from one, some to a small degree, others with the deepest of sorrows. What I learned is that we cannot defeat fear. We can’t knock it down. We have to look it in the eye, speak to it, embrace and acknowledge it as part of ourselves. We have to live with fear and despite it.
It is the only possibility we have to come back undamaged after our deepest fears have turned into reality. As Rudyard Kipling would have put it:
“Or watch the things you gave your life to, broken,
And stoop and build ’em up with worn-out tools”
And still, he isn’t encouraging anyone to be strong, so please, do not ask me that. I am strong. I have been strong for months, while I saw my fear arising from its hidden shelter to meet me. I have been strong while I faced it. I talked to it and calmed it. I begged to let me do the best I could, without stopping me.
Tell me now to be fragile. I am empty inside. Tell me to be resentful with the world, because I fought hard..we fought hard, but we didn’t win. To be angry with me because I made promises which could not be kept. I gave hope that didn’t last. Being strong means hiding. Not facing those new fears. Not grieving. And I don’t want that.
With these thoughts in my head, I realized there is one thing that constantly challenges loss: “Love is like the wind. You can’t see it, but you can feel it.” from A walk to remember stood up with a new meaning before me. Love endures, even through fear. You cannot lose it unless you want to. Nothing you dread can destroy the love you have unless you permit it. You have to grab it and not let it go.
Fear, on the other hand, is like a stormy day you have to accept, holding on to the hope that you’ll soon see a rainbow somewhere. Even a pale one. For a short minute. But you will see it and feel everything that cannot be taken away. Because…it’s yours.
