Write about Fear

Writing about my fears is easy. Facing them takes guts. Fears are personal, intangible. Fear lives within. No one sees it. When I was asked to write about fear, I hesitated. I moved my pen across the paper. Should I share this personal journey? Should I open up? I tried to think about my childhood fears. Sitting in a dentist chair. Waking up suddenly from a nightmare. Or what about some of my adult fears? Finding out my husband was having an affair. Universal fears. Things that touch the human condition, shake the soul. Should I share? Ok. Pen on paper scratching an outline of a fear I experienced.

2003 - a year that was supposed to be my bellweather year. My oldest son graduating from college. And not only graduating, but with honors, summa cum laude! And his major was aerospace engineering. Tough courses. Math and science. I am astonished a guy with such a mind came out of me. He was also getting married a week later. I was busting with motherly pride. It was the last year of my forties and life was really good.

Until.... I was drifting off to sleep one night in that twilight time of not asleep, not awake. I was doing a self exam like every woman ought to do regularly. There was something that should not be there, just a pea-sized thing. Hard. I ignored it and went to sleep, but it was gnawing at me. I slept fitfully. I din't tell anyone for three weeks. But it was there. I would not steal my son's spotlight. It was his year! He had worked so hard for this. I kept silent. But like all things ugly I sweep away, push out of sight, toss in the garbage, this would not disappear. I felt it during graduation, through the wedding, at the reception. There was this thing that I knew I had to face.

Finally, the whirl of life slowed and I called the doctor. He got me in that day. Time for an ultrasound now. I saw it on the screen. It was bigger and nastier and darker than it felt. It looked like a gargoyle without a face. Just this black spot looking back at me with a vacant stare. My fear caught me in the throat. The technician glanced sideways at me. She knew I knew, but she would not speak. I saw their looks. She left the room to get the doctor. Decided to do a biopsy right then.

My husband was nervous but quiet. We lived silently with our fear for another week while the biopsy was shipped out to be examined microscopically. It was not necessary to go back to hear the results. I told my husband what I expected. He was introspective as we sat in the room waiting. My doctor arrived with a large manilla envelope and stoic face. She was guarded, "This is not the news I want to deliver to anyone. It seems to be news I am sharing more and more."

A woman hears she has breast cancer. Is that the greatest fear of life? I think there are worse fears. Losing a child is a mother's worst fear; losing a breast is bad but not as bad. I lived through the cancer, the surgeries, the chemo. I am free. I am a survivor. It was a year I would not want to relive. It was a scary, fearful time. But I embraced my fears and learned about cancer. I learned mine was only stage two. Survivable. Life goes on. Happily I might add. I'm back in school determined to get this degree, maybe more.

Fears come and go. What do we do with them? Face them. Embrace them. Accept them. Nothing is as bad as it seems. Change is inevitable. The experience did not kill me, but made me stronger. Sounds cliche. But aren't cliches formed out of universal experiences.

Changes, Changing, Changed

Every so often I get this urge to rearrange the furniture in my house and it makes my husband roll his eyes when I say it's time. I have lived in this house for about nine years and every room in my house has undergone radical changes, all rooms except the bedroom. We have not touched the arrangement of our bedroom for a number of reasons. It is partly due to the odd configuration of the windows. Where would this fit or that go? Mostly we haven't moved things around due to the weight of our furniture. Solid oak. King sized. Huge. Heavy. "Impossible!" my husband would say, "too much work." But for at least eight of the last nine years, I have been pleading for change.

Last weekend I pulled out some graph paper, ruler, and a measuring tape. Change was overdue. I measured and calculated. I had not been able to do a decent vacuuming behind the bed for much too long. That says something about me I know. Housekeeping is not my thing. I couldn't dust behind the furniture so I'd throw my duster back there and let it fall down. I had to bend and stretch and gyrate to find the duster to bring it back to the surface knowing full well I couldn't get all the dust up. I might throw out my back moving the furniture, but at least I could get at those dust angels.

He came in to my office to inquire what I was up to and when I showed him what I was graphing, he rolled his eyes. "You're gonna kill me yet," and grabbed his back in mock pain. I laughed at his joke, but he knew I meant business. He saw my resolve.

"Time for a change!" I smiled. My conservative husband does not like change. He is routined. You can set your clock by his actions. We are very different. While I might take a different route to work every day, he goes the same way. While I might go to bed and wake up at odd hours, he is structured and has set times. He is predictable. I'm not. He hates moving furniture. I don't. Usually. The bedroom furniture is huge and heavy. But I am resolved.

The rearranging went quite nicely; better actually than both of us expected. It feels good to walk in the bedroom. We now have a corner with nothing in it. No other room in our house feels this spacious. I like the zen of it, the minimalist feel. The expanse of space in there feels good. It feels like the title of an essay I read for my Monday night class this week - "The Solace of Open Spaces" by Gretl Ehrlich. There is solace in the void. She went west to get away from things. She discovered herself out on the open range. She found the spaces within herself a solace.

My room feels as though the space is waiting for something. More change. More - something. It is going to stay empty for awhile. I'm tired of more. Aren't all of us? We have so much. Let it be. A phrase from Erlich's story comes to mind, "our affluence is strangling us." One of the biggest real estate booms right now is in storage units. Americans have so much stuff we have to buy space just to hold it. Space really is the final frontier. We want to fill it up with our stuff. Change it. Rearrange it. Fill'er up.

Writing my piece About Me for class this week, looking back, reflecting on my history, life has been nothing but change. Loss, movement, rearranging. A lot is being said these days about change. Change is in the air. We are ready for change. Change is on its way. It's unusual to hear these phrases bandied about, because for most of my life I've often heard just the opposite. That people don't like change. Changes are scary they say. People like to keep things as they are. I work at a company that likes to change, mix things up, "reorg" they call it. People get nervous. I ask why be nervous? Change is coming, they'll say. I stop and wonder about the fear of change. Me? I don't remember life ever being void of change.

Change is healthy. Rearranging clears the cobwebs and the dust angels. It brings a fresh perspective. I woke up in my rearranged bedroom this morning, peering out in the darkness and still half asleep. Which way is the bathroom? My mind had been trained for eight years to see things a certain way. It feels good to change.