The Fear
There was a brief report on the news tonight that was about a robbery in my neighborhood. Some out of towners were eating at a barbeque restaurant on Saturday night...one which I walk past all the time. On the way back to their car, which was parked on a busy street in front of brand new luxury townhomes, they were assaulted, robbed without struggle, and then, senslessly, a man was shot in the head. This all happened about 6 blocks from where I'm sitting now.
That made me start thinking about my own fears. I have basic fears: spiders, creaky noises, forgetting important meetings. But I also have looming fears, like palls that I turn my back on instead of facing. I don't let myself worry about violence, racism, death, poverty, disease, or war. While I try to do "what I can" to help, it is never really the assistance that I can actually afford, but a easy, safe, and painless effort. I give money to charity, I'm going to try to volunteer this summer, but I cannot bring myself to read articles about the suffering in depth, nor can I throw myself into a cause. "Not at this time in my life" is my mantra (or excuse), but it's really a way of avoiding that pain and the fear that it would consume me if I let it in. This is the typical sugar-coated reality that Americans are guaranteed. We are so lucky.
That isn't to say that our country doesn't have many problems as well...but generally, we have more of everything than most of the rest of the world.
Gun violence is one of our problems. Thousands of people die every year from gunshots. I hope and pray that the innocent man who was 6 blocks away doesn't soon become a victim as well. While I am shocked, I'm not surprised that this happened so close to my home. However, I am afraid that it will let the fear into my life and decision-making. Fear of armed robbery will be added to my mental list of fears-by-association that I keep in my head at nighttime.
Number 1 is rape. Throughout college, I was counciled on the horrors, and it seems even more prevalent to discuss self-defense and self-preservation strategy in mainstream media today. All of that is extremely beneficial, but it has also increased my fear and on-edge state in places that seem obviously risky, like parking garages, closed stairwells, alleys, parking lots, and any place downtown. My heart has started racing now just thinking about it.
My second fear is being hit by a car. One of my mother's colleagues lost his son when he was hit by a car in New York City. The driver ran a red light, hit him, and kept driving. When I attended the funeral with my mother, she looked me straight in the eye and told me that I had to be safe anytime I was walking near any street. Advice that I'd known since I was 4 suddenly became less nagging: it is engrained in my mind because it is now correlated with the possibility of causing horrible pain to my parents.
My third fear is car crashes. I've lost two friends and I remember them always when I'm driving in rain and snow, which makes me drive more cautiously than necessary...because the memory of the sadness caused by their deaths has stayed with me.
These fears are not welcomed companions. I would wish them away in a second if they weren't a part of my reality. I don't know if they've protected me, insulated me from pain, but I know that they control my behavior and inhibit my sense of freedom. In the end, what I fear most is fear itself, like the saying, because it does have the capacity to manipulate me, as it does to people all around the world, in places much less safe than where I live. And because of that, I can brush my fears aside tonight, turn off my computer, and curl up in my down comforter, dreaming about tomorrow's classes at school. I can only sleep well if I make myself believe, like most Americans do, that what I fear most will never happen to me. There is hope in that ideal.