Fear

“Spiders..”

“Ugh, clowns.”

“Really uh, high heights.”

“Being alone…”

“Death.”

“My stepdad...well, sometimes.”

They’re all fears. Some are dreadful while others seem petty. They are all fears nonetheless. The concept of fear keeps us locked up in shackles. We can run only so far before we reach the end of our chain. The chain yanks us back and we cower in our doghouse. It’s truly sad, how we let it rule us like that. Freedom is an idea we all look to with high hopes and big dreams, but those fears will always cloud those aspirations. So what can we do to break free? What’s there to aid us, to help us? Is there anything, anything at all, that can sever our chain and show us what freedom really is? Or are we doomed to stay on our leashes until the day we die. No one really knows. Some claim they’re free yet find themselves chained, just like the rest of us. This world is comprised of nothing but fear. It lurks around every corner, resides within every cranny and hides in the most obscure places. While, at the same time, being in only one place: your mind. 

You will never know true fear until you see it in the eyes of a child. Not only can you see it, but you can feel it. The quivering of their wide optics causes your insides to quiver. Liquidity in their anxious windows produces condensation against yours. Dilated pupils tell a tale of woe as you stare into bottomless pits and suddenly you find yourself falling into those black chasms, lost. You’re lost until a whimper tugs you, finding the core of empathy within you. It’s a gentle tug. It pulls you from the depths of despair and back to a field of fright. Your gaze is pouring into theirs while they empty theirs into yours. And you drown in it. The stoic quality of your persona becomes trumped by the scared condition of the child. This is where you can feel the fear. 

Feel the trembles that surge throughout delicacy, quaking the child to the bone. Feel the hastened rhythm of their heartbeat, pounding at an irregular rate. Feel the stiffness of the atmosphere, thick and heavy. With feeling comes hearing. You can hear the unsteady breathes huffing from their lips. Hear the murmurs that escape confined distress. 

Hear the silence. The silence is perceived just as it is felt, heavy and thick. 

Now touch. Touch the trailing tears streaking down their pale face. Brush your thumb across rolling streams, as if you are swiping away their troubles. Like an eraser to a chalkboard flesh against flesh removes a majority of painted angst. But there’s still residue left over. 

You look from your thumb to the child. You can’t hear the whimpers anymore. No, but you can feel lingering anguish. So you cup the child’s face in your hands and resume gazing into their eyes. They felt you. Now is when you speak. You whisper in coos gently, careful not to startle the child. Just as your eyes will do your voice does. Soothing notes tickle their senses like they were bait, luring the child into a world of serenity. To them the soft coos are like a tender lullaby. They picture their mother singing to them, cradling them back and forth. You become their mother then. Resembling her, you take on her role and that of a canary. Your ethereal melody plucks at their heart strings, just like their whimpers had with yours. 

They hear you. They return your gaze and now they’re the one transfixed on you. Now they see you. Instead of tumbling into their black ditches they wonder into your welcoming ponds. They’re cautious at first, but that’s to be expected. Anything escaping the grasp of fear moves slowly and carefully, as if they’re afraid of getting caught again. Thankfully they don’t get caught. You have a firm yet gentle grip on them. You’re securing them and comforting all at once. They don’t know it yet, but there’s a white light at the end of despair’s tunnel. The white light shines brighter and brighter with each passing moment. The closer the child gets to it the more they can taste freedom. A teasing sample is all they have at first. But that sample dances at the tip of their tongue, compelling them to travel further. So they do. They transition from dark depths to the brilliance of your aquatic pools. Instead of drowning in an abyss of repression they float on the cusp of candor. 

This is where you smile and they reflect the expression. They no longer hesitate or hide. Which makes your smile flourish further, and like a mirror they do the same. As they smile the dilated terror simmers down and a sea of chocolate takes over once more. That seems to make the child giggle, as if they knew their cocoa irises portrayed their favorite candy. A subtle hue of warmth resurfaces to their pale complexion and radiance trickles into silence. The difference is like night and day, love and hate, fear and freedom. You no longer feel quivers. No longer hear whimpers. You don’t see tears, only happiness, which ensued relief. All is well. 

I suppose that’s the secret behind being free. Or rather, how you become free. You realize fear is nothing but a dark pit, and that there’s a brilliant light on the other side of fear’s tunnel. Security and reassurance is what carries you to the light. Those may carry you but it’s your own, new found perseverance that lifts you beyond the light and into the embrace of freedom. Now, you could wonder if the fear of losing freedom would plague you once more and yank you back into the doghouse you just fled from. But the freedom will only go away if you fear such a thing. So don’t. 

Just be free, happy, and you. 

Author's Note

The writing may seem choppy to some, but I did it on purpose, to give the piece a certain mood, voice. If it's read the right way it's not choppy, not really.