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Fear is one of the strongest emotions you can feel. If utilized properly it can save your life. The fight or flight instinct comes from fear. You are more aware, alert, your senses are heightened, hypersensitive to the sights, sounds and smells around you. Your pulse quickens and your pupils dilate. Your body prepares for an advancing attack or to run from imminent danger. We are no so different than animals in the wild. We still have those fear sensors, but most of us aren’t having to hunt for our dinner or escape hungry wolves. But, in more subtle ways, fear serves a practical purpose. Fear of punishment is a deterrent for getting into trouble, fear of injury keeps us from engaging in foolhardy acts that we know or perceive to be dangerous.
It has a purpose. But if not reigned in, it can destroy you. Fear of rejection is why so many people are hesitant to express their emotions to someone they love. Fear of failure is the cause for many unfulfilled dreams. Fear of not fitting in, can keep you from shining brightly. Fear of dying can prevent you from fully living.
I’ve been living in fear for awhile now. Even more so within the last couple of months than perhaps in the last couple of years, if you can believe that. My anxiety level has been ranging from “okay, just breathe” to “holy fucking shit I’m going to have a full blown come apart!!!” to “just hand me the entire bottle”.
More and more, people tell me how good I look or how healthy I seem to be or that I’m finally getting back to my old self. It never fails that when someone tells me this, I feel my insides tense up. Outwardly I smile and say thank you; meanwhile my brain is screaming, “Shut up! The “cancer gods” will hear you!” This might sound ridiculous, and it probably does, but it’s true. It’s like knocking on wood. Or jinxing the situation. Superstition... If I feel too good or look too good, it will be taken from me.
Last week, or maybe the week before, I was at a friend’s house. We were grilling and drinking cold beverages. At one point, he asked me, “At what point do you finally accept it? Your situation?” He was referring to the five stages of grief: denial, anger, bargaining, depression and acceptance. This comes from the Kubler-Ross model of the emotional stages a person goes through concerning death and dying. And that ultimately, a person faced with the death of a loved one, or their own death, will experience all five of these emotions, though not necessarily in the order described above. My personal experience has been that you can live and relive all five emotions in non-linear form, with varying longevity; sometimes in a single day. So, when he asked me this, I told him honestly that I wasn’t sure I had reached acceptance. Maybe I never would. Some days are just better than others.
But then last night I found it; a new kind of peace. As I sat outside, trying to tune out the noise in my head, and “just breathe”, a thought occurred to me. I thought how ironic if I actually lived to be 93 (as a “psychic” in New Orleans once told me I would). And then I thought, and how shitty would it be to live to be 93, and look back on my life and realize I wasted even a single minute worrying about dying. No doctor is going to make me any such promises. No doctor can. But no doctor can make any of you any promises either. I woke up this morning and turned on the news. 30 or more people killed in a terrorist attack in Brussels. I guaran-damn-tee you none of those people while brushing their teeth this morning, thought, “Hmmm, I wonder if I will get killed on my commute to work today by a bomb?”
I talked to someone yesterday who has a family member that is a ten year cancer survivor. He said they told him once, no matter how long you go with no detectable disease, it’s always in the back of your mind. Will it come back? Will it be worse? Will it kill me? Will it be horrible? Will the people I love have to watch me suffer? Will they suffer because of it?
I know the struggle. I face it daily. I don't always overcome the fear, but I can work every day to lessen it, so that it doesn’t control me. That’s close enough to acceptance in my book. And after all, this is my damn book.
