To a New Year of Unknown Fears
I had my first bad dream when I was seven. I was alone in the house where I grew up and heard a knock on our door to the garage. Excited for company, I leaped at the doorknob. Swinging with the door, I was shocked to find not a human, but a giant evil Mickey Mouse. Squealing, I slammed the door, and still squealing, woke up. I glared at the dream catcher behind my bed the way my mom looked at me when I refused to practice piano. "You were supposed to trap that one!" I accused before shuffling under my comforter. I couldn't fall back asleep, and was too scared to make the trek across the hallway to my parents' room. A small part of me feared that my dream was reality and that the evil Mickey was roaming my home. Hiding under my sheets, I hoped that if I couldn't see him, he couldn't see me. Motionless, I spent the rest of the night waiting for the morning, heart beat that much more aggressive with each ambient sound.
For the next few days, I dreaded bedtime, for fear that my bad dream would repeat itself. Realizing at a basic level that my dreams came from inside me, I lamented the fact that I could not simply escape from this bad-dream factory.
About a week after the bad dream, I went to my mom's room where she was organizing her jewelry.
Embarrassed, I asked "Do you know any prayers I can say so that I don't get bad dreams?" "Several," she said unquestioningly. She is very religious and the way she relied on them, I imagined her prayers to be magical incantations. Learning my mom's bad dream prayer was empowering; I couldn't wait to go to sleep that night. The first time I recited it, I felt invincible. I was armed with a secret weapon!
About a week after the bad dream, I went to my mom's room where she was organizing her jewelry.
A month or two later, my mom asked me how the prayer was helping. "I haven't had a bad dream since!" I said with the wide-eyed awe reserved for children. Having conquered them, I couldn't believe I had ever been scared of bad dreams. (Fun fact: A sleep psychologist would explain that my happy, calm thoughts before going to sleep helped to prevent my mind from going down a disturbing path in my sleep.)
Now in my mid-twenties, my former fear of bad dreams is laughable to me. But fear itself is not. This past year of my life was plagued with fear:
Fear of a challenging conversation
This year, in late March, I received and accepted an opportunity at a startup in San Francisco. While I was thrilled to take this next step in my career and begin a new adventure, I was terrified of quitting my then-current job. I had never quit a job (or anything, really) before this and didn't know how to drive the conversation with my manager. I spent 48 hours preparing for our conversation, running through the ideal conversation (and everything that could go wrong) in my mind. At the lowest points, I told myself I was making a horrific mistake. Do you even really want to do this? Maybe you shouldn't leave. Things are not bad. How do you know what things will be like at the new place? Is it worth it? When it finally happened, we were at outdoor picnic tables. My head was light, my heart was a hammer, and my mouth was on autopilot. Time may have stopped. The conversation ended with my manager telling me that "the door was always open" for me to come back, and my wondering why I was ever intimidated to have the conversation.
This year, in late March, I received and accepted an opportunity at a startup in San Francisco. While I was thrilled to take this next step in my career and begin a new adventure, I was terrified of quitting my then-current job. I had never quit a job (or anything, really) before this and didn't know how to drive the conversation with my manager. I spent 48 hours preparing for our conversation, running through the ideal conversation (and everything that could go wrong) in my mind. At the lowest points, I told myself I was making a horrific mistake. Do you even really want to do this? Maybe you shouldn't leave. Things are not bad. How do you know what things will be like at the new place? Is it worth it? When it finally happened, we were at outdoor picnic tables. My head was light, my heart was a hammer, and my mouth was on autopilot. Time may have stopped. The conversation ended with my manager telling me that "the door was always open" for me to come back, and my wondering why I was ever intimidated to have the conversation.
Fear of "bad (wo)men
The day after I started my new job, I was walking home after work when I was mugged in broad daylight. Though I was too shocked to be scared while it was actually happened, I spent the days, weeks, and months afterwards in debilitating fear -- fear that it was a sign I shouldn't have started this new job, fear that the blow to my head would do permanent damage, fear that my head would never stop hurting, fear that my mugger and her cronies would come after me again, fear that every stranger I saw was going to attack me, fear that I would need to go to therapy forever, fear that I was now eternally vulnerable. For months, I avoided leaving my apartment after dark and straying far from it in general. And for several months after the incident, I feared the implications -- legal processes, lawyers, courthouses -- that surrounded it. I often wondered how I could escape it all. Today, I know I can't change what happened, but I feel stronger and resilient as a person for having dealt with it.
The day after I started my new job, I was walking home after work when I was mugged in broad daylight. Though I was too shocked to be scared while it was actually happened, I spent the days, weeks, and months afterwards in debilitating fear -- fear that it was a sign I shouldn't have started this new job, fear that the blow to my head would do permanent damage, fear that my head would never stop hurting, fear that my mugger and her cronies would come after me again, fear that every stranger I saw was going to attack me, fear that I would need to go to therapy forever, fear that I was now eternally vulnerable. For months, I avoided leaving my apartment after dark and straying far from it in general. And for several months after the incident, I feared the implications -- legal processes, lawyers, courthouses -- that surrounded it. I often wondered how I could escape it all. Today, I know I can't change what happened, but I feel stronger and resilient as a person for having dealt with it.
Fear of rejection
Two months after the mugging, the day I submitted my first book to Amazon for publishing, I couldn't eat or drink anything. When I got home from work, I texted a friend. "I can't eat or drink anything. Breathing also feels weird. I'm nervous about launching this book." She FaceTimed me immediately. "What are you nervous about? Plenty of people have read this already -- I've read it four times! It's great. Get it out there." "But I'm scared! What if people hate it? What if people hate me and my writing after reading it? What if the formatting is all off?" "This is just cold feet, press the button! I'm going to watch you do it," my friend encouraged. I pressed the button. The book has been downloaded over a thousand times, and averages a 4.8-star rating.
Two months after the mugging, the day I submitted my first book to Amazon for publishing, I couldn't eat or drink anything. When I got home from work, I texted a friend. "I can't eat or drink anything. Breathing also feels weird. I'm nervous about launching this book." She FaceTimed me immediately. "What are you nervous about? Plenty of people have read this already -- I've read it four times! It's great. Get it out there." "But I'm scared! What if people hate it? What if people hate me and my writing after reading it? What if the formatting is all off?" "This is just cold feet, press the button! I'm going to watch you do it," my friend encouraged. I pressed the button. The book has been downloaded over a thousand times, and averages a 4.8-star rating.
In early December, during my rec league's soccer semifinals, a collision with an opponent sent sliding across the astrosturf field. When I stood up, both my knees were stripped of skin, one of which was rather deep. The wounds bled on the field, burned in the shower, and stung when I walked. They were two dark clouds over our league win. The two things I know about wounds are that you don't want them to get infected and that they are slow-healing for diabetics (two of my grandparents have/had diabetes). For the next week, I feared white-puffiness or perceived high body temperatures and wondered what a "normal" wound-healing time was. Aaaaghhhh. You could have avoided this! Why do you play this stupid game? I yelled at myself in the shower on Day 3, as droplets that may well have been flames, crept under the gauze. Eighteen days later, the knees are close to new (with minor scarring) and I feel silly about my hypochondria.
In each of these distinct moments, the instinctual unexpected fear, that heart-in-stomach sensation that washes over us like a wave, was exactly the same. No matter the gravity of the situation. In those moments, I resented and sometimes considered eliminating the fear-inducing situations altogether, but I can now say that I don't regret any of them. I am thankful to have plowed through the fear to quit a job and start a new wonderful one, to discipline a criminal, to publish a book, and to play my favorite sport. These conquered fears join my former fear of bad dreams in building my ever-growing self-confidence and inner-strength.
Entering 2014, I am not only poised to accept new fears in my path, but eager to encounter them, knowing that each one betters me as an individual. Soon, my fears will have nothing to fear but me. Now I'm just scared that if my fears find out how much I love them, they'll stop coming after me.
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