Fear of Fear
"Inside my head, the war is everywhere." (~ Ocean Vuong " Time Is a Mother")
Evening darkness sprints quickly on an overcast day, when the sprinkles of rain turn into a stubborn downpour. The main roads in Istanbul are glutted to a standstill as the rush-hour traffic has maneuvered into a dead halt.
I’d gotten off the bus from the airport at the wrong stop and foolishly thought I could get an Uber. As I stood getting perilously close to being soaked, the drivers I texted all told me that they couldn’t get to me.
Not knowing how to find my Airbnb, my only option was trying to elbow into a taxi as I had no idea about the public transportation system. Every other person at the bus stop seemed to have the same idea. We’d all wait for taxis to emerge from the sea of headlights and then there’d be a wall of us trying to get into a cab. After a few erratic attempts, my Indian smarts kicked in and I barreled into a cab. The narrow, hilly, curving streets of the northern “new” city of Istanbul presented another set of problems in locating my building. But that’s another story. What I felt standing on the street, in the rain, with my bags, and no idea how to get to my room that first evening in Turkey was fear.
I’m a careful planner for my travels. Being a solo explorer, I am usually quite prepared when I get to an unfamiliar place. However, things happen. Exigencies are inevitable. The future is unpredictable. And fear hardly ever sleeps.
There are two train stations in Dresden, Germany. I was staying at a hotel only a few hundred yards away from one of them. The morning I was to leave for Prague on a train, I didn’t check to make sure I was going to the right station. Realizing my error, it left me with very little time to get to the other station, which I did, though not before I was drenched in sweat in the November morning. Fear again.
I make mistakes. D-uh! Who doesn’t. I missed an international flight because I misread the 24-hour clock timing on my ticket as early morning when it was early afternoon. I know. I know. This was in India before computerizations and it took a village and then some to get a flight home for an interview appointment I couldn’t miss. Fear was unmistakable when I first realized my error.
Yes, fear of not being able to control my life exactly as I want to is a fear.
The other certainty, which has much information to make it real is that I always have been able to find a way to not only deal with that fear but also overcome it and make the best of my situation.
When I was in middle and high school, I used to be very nervous before taking written exams. My approach to the test-taking was to throw up before the exam and then go in and open that blue answer book and write. It stood me in good stead. I was a good student.
The anticipation of chaos and lack of control makes me fearful. Realizing this has taken me a good long time. Today, when the world that we live in is a series of events, daily, that has the potential to create havoc in our lives, the ability to remind and reassure ourselves that we will be able to navigate that unknowable is important. It is crucial.
Will everything work out? Probably not. Will I try my best to tramp through the shoals created by narcissistic despots and Ketamine-driven henchmen? Absolutely. I can’t do it alone. I need you too. Partly why I use a digital platform. To connect.
ALL PHOTOGRAPHS COURTESY OF AUTHOR. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.
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