Carl Bower · Private Fears
I am terrified that my genetics will someday be my future.
Afraid of the voices in my head or that those bits of paranoia aren't
acceptable and in fact the result of a disorder. My grandmother was
schizophrenic and killed herself when I was six months old. I've lived with her
shadow. My dad always warning "that stuff skips a generation,” and it's
terrified me since childhood as I've struggled through my own bouts of mental
health issues.
- Palynn
I’m afraid of not being loved or cared for.
- Michael
Talking about fears is always easier when you can hide behind
metaphors and cute rhymes. But if you asked me about them, I'd tell you 'My
fears rhyme with the word fraud'
I'm scared that deep inside, I'm just a failure hoping she
can prove the world wrong. Every moment
of great confidence that I have is often followed by an overwhelming feeling of
uncertainty and doubt. I fear that my efforts will eventually go to waste. That
I will never be able to live up to the potential people see in me. I fear that
one day, the world will see who I really am and at that moment, all I've built
up will fall apart.
-
Femi
When my son died, I lied to myself and said he was just
spending the night with a friend. I keep telling myself that lie any time I
start thinking about him being gone. I’m afraid of who or what I’ll become if I
ever let myself realize the truth.
-
Keriba
I wake up every morning afraid to get out of bed because I
know I’m going to have to encounter others during the day. I stay inside most
of the time for that reason. I’m afraid of being myself, being trans, and
living with it day after day. I fear the judgement of others as I walk down the
street. I fear it so intensely that the simple act of being noticed by others
on the street gives me anxiety.
I fear men. All men, but particularly straight white men.
This fear is more like a physical fear for my life. I actively avoid them at all costs. When I
can’t avoid them, I pick fights with them. This usually makes them not want to
be around me… mission accomplished. I am, however, physically attracted to
them.
I fear anything that makes me cry or feel any kind of emotion
other than anger. It’s become easy for
me divert my fear onto a path of anger. That too, scares me.
-
Chelsea
My worst fear is being abandoned, unloved and unimportant. I’m
afraid I will never be good enough for anyone just as I am.
-
Colleen
I am a veteran of the war in Afghanistan. I have had an issue
with self injury since combat and my divorce. I don’t know if my fear is that I’m
afraid to love anyone again, or if I don’t know how to live without the pain.
-
Justain
I’m afraid to run out of time before I even realized it’s passed
by. I’m young. Twenty-four. But last year I had to have emergency surgery and
was minutes away from dying. I wanted to turn it into a positive, told myself
moving forward I’d “grab life by the balls”.
But I blink and six months is gone. 15,768,017 mundane, forgettable
seconds that I can never get back.
-
Amanda
I am afraid that I drive men to either die or want to murder
me.
Last year the guy I was supposed to move in with died of a
heart attack. He was thirty-three years old. A guy I was supposed to go on a
date with didn’t show up because he died of a heart attack. A guy I was having
an emotional affair with died of a seizure just before I left my boyfriend for
him.
I’ve had two boyfriends try to kill me. One shot at me and
missed by centimeters. The bullet went through my hair. The other tried to kill
me by beating me to death.
I am afraid that because of this, love is not an option and
any semblance of love is only disguising a murderous or suicidal soul.
-
Holli
I’m afraid my baby will die. I’ll be holding her in my arms
and she’ll be breathing and I’ll feel the rapture and the relief of okay, we’ve
got her now, safe and sound, but then she slips away from us anyway and there’s
nothing we can do to bring her back. After all the love and hope and good
intention we poured into bringing her to life, she just goes away…and instead
of celebrating a miracle, we mourn an unspeakable tragedy.
-
Janine
Aside from losing my parents or having something terrible
happen to my children, deep down I’m afraid of two things: not truly living my
life, and opening my heart to true intimacy.
-
Dan
I’m terrified of my ultra conservative family discovering my
bisexuality.
I’m also afraid of disconnection. I tell myself I’m not ready
to settle down with one person, I need variety, I’m too independent, I’m still finding
myself. It’s all true, but it’s also a barrier. When I find myself getting
close to truly loving someone, I end up self-sabotaging. Being vulnerable is an
experience that connects us, but once we are hurt, nobody is willing to open up
again, to trust completely. Relationships start to become more meaningless,
surface level, or all about sex.
I fear a world full of people using each other; I fear the
fact that I am one of those people. No matter my intentions or how aware I am,
I disconnect and choose control over love every time.
-
Makayla
We adopted both of our children from Ethiopia. Our
ten-year-old son came home at 7 months but our twelve-year-old daughter was
already four years old when we got her. She has severe Reactive Attachment
Disorder and was so abusive to my son, me, and our dogs that she had to go to a
therapeutic treatment home. From there
she went to another family who has raised children like her and will likely
adopt her. This process takes six months, and they can decide to back out at
anytime within that window. We are at month five.
My son is terrified she will come back. So am I.
-
Julia
I’m intensely afraid of failure, to the point of paralysis in
my creative output. I’m secretly afraid I’ll never harness any of my potential.
I crave connection to a community of artists, but have overwhelming thoughts of
never becoming one of them.
-
Sierra
I left South Africa when I was seventeen to study in America
on a scholarship. It was an opportunity for me to strive and change my
surroundings. Though I made friends in America, I always felt lonely in a
crowd. America felt foreign, and I was always reminded of things I couldn’t do
because of my own foreign status. Because of my background, I always have to
work harder to prove that I am capable.
When I visited South Africa after six years of living in the
States, I felt lonely there as well. The place I thought I knew so well had
also become foreign to me. I felt like people did not understand me, they had
changed. So had I. My biggest fear is never knowing where my home is.
-
Mathiba
I’m afraid of going to federal prison. I live in a house full
of roomies. At some point, someone was involved in something deplorable online.
I got caught in a crossfire. I’m currently waiting for my attorney to hear from
the DA.
For the last four months, I’ve deeply analyzed my current
life and overall existence. I can’t describe the utter terror of potentially
having my life ended by imprisonment. It’s impossible to fathom and completely
surreal when you’re confronted with it. What do you do when you are faced with
the possibility of your life, everything you are familiar with, everything you
wanted, hoped and dreamed of could end at any moment?
I stressed about work, who I would marry, would I ever have
kids, should I start a business. I had been told all my life not to take my
health, finances, friends and loved ones for granted. I never thought for a moment to appreciate
freedom.
It never entered my mind.
-
Jennifer
I am afraid of my past keeping me stuck in its weighty grips
forever. I'm afraid of not being able to let go and move on from years of
childhood incest, neglect, and abuse. I am afraid of who I am, if I am not the
abused girl filled with pain of childhood molestation from my dad. Wild as
though it may be, I'm afraid of knowing what it feels like to be okay.
-
Joselyn
I’m a Veteran Airborne Combat Medic. The first soldier in
Iraq that I tried to save died on me. I was doing chest compressions, unaware
of the nick near his eye where a small piece of shrapnel entered and began a
hemorrhage in his brain. He might have lived, but there I was, pumping blood,
flooding his cranial cavity. I was following the orders of a superior who didn’t
see the nick either. After all my training to scan for entry and exit wounds, I
stopped short, trusting his authority in the chaos. But he was my patient.
I redeployed to Walter Reed Army medical hospital and watched
the tortured bodies of soldiers fighting to survive. I drank too much and was
sent to inpatient care to deal not only with not only the the horrors of the
battlefield, but the horror of watching soldiers fighting for their lives,
hooked to machines that would not let them die, wives pushing their husbands on
gurneys because they no longer had limbs and were badly burned all over their
bodies. Then I was sent to Afghanistan to clear IEDs and was in over forty
firefights where I could have died. When I finally came home, my best friend
died while trying to save a man from a car wreck. Everything hit me at once.
I’m afraid of not being able to share my experiences with
someone who understands everything about me. It’s a waking nightmare.
-
Albert
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I'm 29, pregnant, alone, and homeless. I am living my fear.
-
Angeline
I’m afraid of brokenness, of always being a victim. Scared of
being alone in ways most people cannot fathom.
I had a friend being stalked by her ex, Jason, who was just
out of prison. One night when she was closing Subway alone, he came inside and
sat by the back door saying nothing, just staring at her. My boyfriend Jeremy
and I picked her up and brought her back to our place. An hour and a half later, Jason smashed
through our bedroom window with his roommate and said he was going to kill all
three of us. Jason's roommate held Jeremy from behind as Jason savagely stabbed
and slashed him. I clutched Jeremy to me, desperately trying to plug all the
gaping holes. No one even came out of their homes and I know they heard my
screams for help, but help wasn’t coming and he's gasping and fighting for me,
trying to not leave me alone, as I had just lost my dad and had little else. I
had to tell him it was okay, that I would be okay and that he could let go now.
I felt him relax and slip away with his last breath. With him went my entire
life. Gone.
Jason’s roommate is out on bond and heard me testify at
pretrial that I saw everything. I've already received threats about the
upcoming murder trial and I'm still in the same place it happened. Feeling safe
is a luxury I only daydream about, ‘cause when I finally succumb to sleep I'm
in that life-shattering moment reliving my agony or hiding from some dark
terrible thing coming to consume all that I am. For me, fear is a constant
companion.
-
Shannon
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