Afraid

When I was in elementary school my mom took us to the pool.

It was a typical summer day, and the pool was packed with people. I guess we weren't the only ones with the brilliant idea of jumping into a giant tub of cold water to beat the heat.

I have fond memories of this pool. I would frequent the twirly tube slide, float through the lazy river, and attempt flips off of the diving board. This particular trip, however, provided me with a different kind of memory. One of great panic and fear.

I was floating around the shallow end of the pool when I noticed a tube floaty. The particular tube floaty had cutouts in the center that you could put your legs through, much like a pair of underwear. It was quite obviously too small for me, so I figured it would be infinitely comedic if I crammed my legs into it and waddled around the pool. Much to my surprise, it slid on quite easily, though the water probably helped with that.

So I had done it. I successfully crammed myself into a toddler floaty, and I now had a tube of air around my waist. All that was left to do was to act silly. So waddled into the pool to a spot where I couldn't touch the bottom and bobbed up and down. I was just testing the limits of this thing, seeing if it could hold my weight, when I accidentally flipped upside down.

At first it was no big deal. I figured I could take the tube off of my legs and float through the water back to the surface, but the thing wouldn't budge. Next I tried flipping back over, but somehow my skinny legs didn't have the pendulum-like weight of my upper body. As I thrashed my legs around as they stuck out of the water, a thought occured to me.

I might actually drown.

As the panic began to set I reached out my arms towards anything under the water that I could grip onto. That's when I grabbed somebody's swimsuit. I pulled on it and began to leverage them to flip myself right side up. I'm sure they must have been confused what was happening, and I'm sure that I grabbed maybe a little bit more violently than I had intended, but I managed to get right side up again.

Looking back, the whole ordeal lasted maybe 10 seconds. I don't remember what the person I grabbed looked like or how surprised I'm sure they were, but I do remember the panic that I felt. It's the type of panic that makes a 10 second sequence of events feel 3 minutes long.

Growing up that was probably one of the only times that I was the most afraid. If we exclude outliers like this, the things that would make me afraid were so trivial. I would be afraid that my friends couldn't hang out, or I would be afraid that my mom wouldn't let me play the GameCube. You never know as a kid that there are far worse things to be afraid of, so you go to the basement and play Luigi's Mansion while your parents are upstairs afraid of the 2008 housing market crash.

Now that I'm a parent, my fears have shifted into similar things that I'm sure my parents feared. You know, things like death, war, my child's saftey, etc... I'll spare you the details, but suffice to say that I worry about things, about the future.

Sometimes these worries and fears decide to show up all at once.

If you've never had a panic attack, I'd describe it as the butterflies you'd feel if you were about to present something on a stage to an audience full of people, but like on steroids. You don't know how you got here, but you're suddenly white knuckling the steering wheel trying to control your breathing. The only thing that seems to help it pass is pulling over to the side of the road and sobbing uncrontrollably.

My wife started watching a show recently that I'd never heard of called The Great. It's a Bridgerton-esc 18th century comedy period piece set in Russia. The king is a ruthless ruler, cruel and uncaring. In one scene he starts beating someone relentlessly for pretty much no reason. After the beating is finished and the king has left, the man gets up, sits down at the table, and starts eating breakfast, joyously talking about how good it is. In all aspects he seems completely unfazed by what just happened. Someone asks how he can be so "sanguine" after being punched in the face and kicked in the ribs. Isn't he afraid of the king? He responds:

"Truth is, he'll do as he wishes with me‐‐ hang me, flay me, or take me hunting and for a nice lunch. One cannot let oneself live in fear of that. He can kick me, but I will not let him rob me of my enjoyment of this egg, that coffee, or this day. I will not let fear take my life from me."

I was a little caught off guard when he said this. I wasn't expecting something to resonate so deeply with me when I sat down to watch this show.

I will not let fear take my life from me.

There will always be reasons to be afraid. There will always be things to fixate on and worry about. There will always be scary things happening in the world.

I will not let fear take my life from me.

In the midst of it all, I fear what I cannot control. I could lose my job, my house, my family. A satellite could fall from the sky and crush me.

I will not let fear take my life from me.

Maybe you're like me and you've found yourself gripping the steering wheel, just trying to breathe. Life is scary and overwhelming, I understand. You can perservere. Do it for your family, do it for your friends, do it for yourself, and if all else fails do it out of spite. Just keep telling yourself:

I will not let fear take my life from me.