Sometimes I wonder if we can make the things we fear happen. As if the fear itself creates some centrifugal force, and the things we are afraid of are drawn to us. I don't fear much at all, and if I do, I usually make myself face that fear until I burn a hole right through it. I started telling myself in high school that most people don't do the things they want or have the life they want out of fear, and I wasn't going to be one of those people who let fear stop them from attempting anything...but there have been a few things I can own up to as being serious fears....not the fears that stop you though, but the fears that become magnets that almost turn the fear into reality.
I was terrified Aaron would die. I had nightmares about it. I was afraid someone would kill my soulmate in a war (a war he wasn't even fighting in, but I didn't know that, and again, the pathological liar of an ex-boyfriend is a whole other story. You'll have to read the book.). The point is, the greatest fear I've probably ever had in my entire life was to lose him....to have him not exist anymore and to have to figure out how to make sense of the rest of my life afterwards. I felt very secure in our relationship (funny, I know), so I never even imagined that he would ever leave me for another woman or fall out of love with me. I knew, as much as I've ever known anything, that we were meant to be together, and that is what made the thought of loss so absolutely unbearable. Then...it happened.
I lost him, but not in any way I could have ever even thought to imagine. Sometimes I think the way I lost him was more devastating than anything else that could have happened. The man I knew never existed, but still it is as if he died suddenly. At the same time, there was nothing noble in his disappearance from this Earth, as would have been the case had he died in war, and I could have sat around with other soldiers and family and honored his life. There are no consoling thoughts of ever meeting him again in Heaven or any kind of afterlife. There are no other people who loved him as I loved him, and there is not another human on Earth that misses him. He was a fictional character, and I was very wrong about him.
He walked out my door one afternoon in February as the person I loved more than anyone in the world, and I had no idea I would never see him again. I will never get to talk to him again or have him hold me again. I will never smell his morning breath or watch him shave his face again. I will never see him smile or hear him speak my name. I can't call him on the phone and ask him how he is doing. My absolute greatest fear in the world came true in the cruelest of ways. I was forced to make sense out of the rest of my life afterwards without him...and also out of the life I had with him. The good news is that my greatest imaginable fear came true in the most unimaginable way...and I survived. I more than survived. I was able to smile, and be truly happy and successful again. I worked very hard to heal that trauma, and I know now that there is a strength in me that makes me even more fearless than I was before.
I suppose my second greatest fear in my life involved my marriage to Jonathan. It was the fear of failure. I knew I could survive the sudden loss of someone I deeply loved. I knew I could have my whole reality taken and turned upside down, and I knew I could grow and walk out of the rubble a better person...but could I survive the slow and painful failure of something I deeply cared about? Could I survive the gradual realization that the person I wanted to be married to didn't really want to be married to me? What would it mean if I was wrong again? What would people think? My third greatest fear has emerged as fear of being judged for my marriage ending. Not that it ultimately matters what other people think, because I know the right choice has been made, but it sneaks in my mind when everything is too quiet. I try not to dwell on the fear of being judged. If people are judging me, there is nothing I can do about it anyway.
I know it sounds silly, but sometimes I wonder if the fear of my marriage not working out is what caused it to not work out? Or if the fear of being judged means people are going to judge me? Or if the fear of Aaron not existing anymore caused me to lose Aaron? I wonder if I could learn to let go of those great fears, if I could avoid the great heartbreaks? I do believe in the power of thought, and that more positive things tend happen to you when you're staying positive. It makes sense. How though, do we loosen our grip of the very thing that is most important to us enough to not let the fear of losing it destroy it? I don't even know if I'm making sense anymore. I think I just tied my brain in a pretzel for tonight & probably need to go watch The Bachelor or some other mind numbingly bad TV. OH WAIT, I sold my TV last week! Thank goodness there are TV episodes of shows available for free online.
