Fear Factor

When I was a very young kid, I was afraid of monsters: giant creatures, Godzilla, vampires. My two all-time vivid nightmares involved chases. One had a dinosaur chasing me down endless corridors. The other had Dracula running after me all over this cavernous movie house. He wanted to get his hands on this jug of blood I was carrying. Years later as I was remembering that dream, I thought, “Hey, why didn’t I just drop the damn jug and leave it?” but it was already way, way too late for that. I had grown up and realized those monsters weren’t real.

As a child I was also deathly afraid of strong winds. Blame it on an over-active imagination, inadequate knowledge of the weather, and reading one too many Drama In Real Life tornado stories in Reader’s Digest. Every time strong winds would blow, I’d cower and scream, “Hangin! Hangin!” (“The wind! The wind!”) But I eventually outgrew that fear.

A little older, I was afraid of flying cockroaches. Ooh, I hated those critters. They’d drive me nuts; they’re so agitated I couldn’t tell where they would land... more often than not on me! I wasn’t a sharpshooter, so killing them with a well-aimed slipper was not only difficult, it meant the roach would take flight again to escape the Sandal-bida missile. But then I discovered the power of the aerosol insecticide. And so my fear of flying bugs diminished.

Growing up loveless, my biggest fear was, “What if I never meet anyone for me?” So every night I silently prayed, “Lord give me a lover!” (which incidentally is the title of an old black-and-white Pinoy film.) But years passed and I learned how to be comfortable with myself. Now I don’t fear loneliness—I’m rarely lonely when I’m alone cuz I got me.

After that came a new kind of fear: Am I capable of handling an exclusive relationship? I’m 38 years old and many of my ways are quite set. I’ve been flying solo for most of my adult life; am I still capable of allowing someone to share in my personal space? Sharing my time, energy and effort—that’s easy. Sharing my life—that’s different. (Sharing my hard-to-find CDs and DVDs? Never!)

For years I’ve conquered my fears, sans tears. (Sorry, couldn’t help myself, hehehe!) This latest fear is just one more challenge to confront, one more obstacle to overcome, one more summit to surmount, one more… you get the picture.

Strangely though, this is fear has lost its bite in recent years. Oh it can still nag from time to time. But mostly it just sits there quietly in one corner, meek and almost toothless now, letting off an occasional whine (or two) to remind me of its presence.

One day I may face the fear head-on and know for sure if indeed I am capable of sharing my life with someone else. Or maybe one day the fear will just vanish, become irrelevant altogether. Maybe I will realize that there’s really nothing to fear at all.

If that day comes, I’m sure a new fear will take its place.

We need monsters to slay. Let there be monsters!