I Am Afraid

We're all living in fear in a sense, but the key to overcoming that fear is understanding and accepting it and what it means...

I turned 30 recently.

 

I turned 30 and with that arrival in a new decade of my life, something has changed. I have changed. The paradigm has shifted. I realise something, something that (for some reason) I had never been terribly aware of before, but that recently I had something of a crisis with….

 

I am terribly afraid to die.

 

Perhaps my arrival at this new age has brought home the reality of my mortality, I’m not certain.

But for some reason, the reality of death hit me and hit me hard recently. It was a shock (oddly) and it hurt me.

 

As a result of this, you find yourself becoming obsessed with age. Famous rock starts, politicians, public figures of historical significance that I learn about, read about. My first thought about them is always the same; how long did they live? When did they die? What did they die of and why?

I don’t know why this is, maybe the logic is that if you hear of enough people having lived to a very old age it becomes more statistically likely that you will too?

 

It’s a basic truth; we all die.  We learn this fact so early in life that we actually barely ever stop to think about it again, I don’t think that we’re actually supposed to. But I can’t help it, I’m a terminal thinker. There isn’t a subject in existence I haven’t considered and over considered from every definable angle. It’s how my mind works, how it has to function. This is not optional.

 

Death is an absolutely horrible reality, and one I have taken my time getting accustomed to in recent months. It has lived with me and in so doing forced me to consider it and what it means. I think too much, I know this is true. That’s another truth, and so with most big contemplations it leads me back to the same place as usual; here. Me.  You turn to yourself for the answers, because you have to.

 

I won’t even pretend to not be aware of what a mess my head is. It’s so crowded and noisy up there, so many crazy and conflicting thoughts and ideas. It is truly a mess. But it’s MY mess, and it means something, all of it does. It’s my job to understand it. It is my responsibility to understand myself or certainly it’s vital that I at least try.

 

Much has changed about me since I last wrote regularly, not least that I’m older (30 as I said) but also everything else in life is not as it was… Historically I was a solitary soul. I hung alone, I drank alone and I lived alone. Yes I had friends, I drank with them occasionally too, but they didn’t know me, not in an absolute sense. I wasn’t there. I remained hidden within, both from them and from everyone else and in many ways I have since discovered; from myself.

 

You see, not only am I NOT a singular solitary soul any longer, no not only that, but I’m married. Me! It still feels strange to say it, to sit here and write it feels very odd. As if I’m revealing it to an earlier version of myself. To that strange mysterious man who would frequent café’s and bars to write poetry. Or happily wander through throngs of happy drinkers and dancers in pubs and clubs. Content with his own company; full of his own darkness, his own justice and logic and self-importance, what ever would he say? I think he’d think it was a joke. I think he’s think that I (he) had gone mad.

After all, didn’t we write that piece some years back about how love itself didn’t actually exist? What did I call it? A temporary chemical imbalance of the brain I believe it was. That’s funny. Funny and ironic considering what I’ve discovered about myself since those days of seemingly content (or at least secure) loneliness.

 

You see, it took the long term presence of another person in my life, the daily reflection of myself in the point of view of someone other than important old me, for me to realize the most important truth; I wasn’t actually all that well. At times I’m still not.

 

You see; I’m bipolar me. Funny how something so seemingly obvious took such a long time to become apparent to me…. But that’s isolation you see, that’s what it does. You get comfortable with your own view of the world. You become accustomed to judging others. Judging them for a variety of reasons of course, but most of all judging them for not understanding you… Which don’t get me wrong is completely valid and often more than justified. Some people are lazy and would rather label a person than attempt to comprehend them. But when there is a person opposite you who loves you, who wants to be with you and more than anything wants to understand you but finds that they can’t… Then, then is when you realize, accept and acknowledge that you have a problem.

 

Before, I never had to have emotions. They were present of course and they would at times make themselves apparent and surface. But like sugar in your tea, they were optional not mandatory. I could afford to regard the world with a cold and at times calculating gaze. I could breathe without feeling, see without realizing. I was more like an entity than a human being.

 

When you fall in love (5 years ago me is wincing again) this all alters. Emotions are no longer something which you can call optional, they become a fact in your universe, they are daily, hourly, they are there and they dominate. This can be a difficult thing to adjust to if previously you’ve been a detached and rather remote and removed person. Quite a shock and quite overwhelming.

This is strange, rich and strange, because at first it’s wonderful….

 

At first it’s like some sort of glorious revelation, it seems to complete you. But that’s in the early days, mutually everything is easy there. It’s all getting to know you, getting to like you, finding that you like me type stuff. Then comes co-existence, then comes being together, living together, trusting each other. Like anything worth doing in life (and worth it, it is) it isn’t easy.

 

Trust! By god trust, what a can of worms that one is. Before, I trusted NOBODY. Not one single body. I was closed, I was protected, I was safe. But you know what? I wasn’t living. Not in the truest sense, hardly at all really. Oh but to trust someone, to expose yourself in that way, to make yourself completely and utterly vulnerable in such an absolute way. I might as well have been Superman willingly exposing himself to kryptonite. It was rough, very very hard.

 

 

 

It took this experience, this ordeal, this challenging but ultimately wonderful journey for me to show to myself that I had a problem. That deep down I’ve kind of always known that there was something ‘different’ about me. I’d always celebrated that difference, made it a defining trait of who I am, I still do. That hasn’t changed, my idiosyncrasies are not invalid. But at the same time, to truly accept and embrace something, you have to understand it. I didn’t before I see and understand this now. I didn’t fully understand myself and in a sense I was kind of hiding from myself. I was hiding behind unemotional and cold hard walls. In so doing, depriving myself of the entirety of who I am, who I’ve always been, and ultimately (and most truly) who I am capable of becoming.

 

Yes, I am terribly afraid to die.

I am terribly flawed, and terribly odd, and terribly complicated and confused at times. But on top of all of that, and more important than any and all of it; I’m terribly alive.

 

In the meantime, I’ll just keep living. Just keep learning, just keep developing, just keep changing and hopefully just keep growing. There will be good days; there’ll hopefully be some great days. At the same time I know that there will be bad days, and very probably some terrible days too.

 

I guess the point in the end is that there will be days; and there’ll be lots of them. It’s my job to live them, and if I’m going to do it, then (as with all things I do) I might as well give it my best.

 

One day at a time.

 

Far better that I be afraid to die than afraid to live….

Author's Note

Thank you for reading, I appreciate it.

Reviews

[Jenny]

THOUGHT PROVOKING!

I enjoyed reading this. Starting the poem with being afraid to die and then tying it all in at the end by addressing it being better than fearing living was so smart. And the way that you laid out your ideas and transitioned them to the next, along with your language, made me feel like you were sitting next to me telling your story. A pleasure to read!

Thank you so much for sharing!
J

[Brett Pritchard]

Thank you I appreciate your review

[Johnny Dep]

Beautiful write for sure.
Thank you for sharing.

[Brett Pritchard]

Thank you! I appreciate you taking the time to read and review.

[Alvin L. Kathembe]

This is beautiful! And such an eye-opener for us invulnerable, cynical twenty-somethings who float around avoiding life, and thinking that we'll live forever. Ok, maybe that's just me.

Thank you for sharing this!

[Brett Pritchard]

No it's not just you, it's me too! Or was at least. Thank you for reading and thanks for the feedback!