Archive for January, 2007

We’re all afraid of something. Whether it’s the dark, those monsters in the closet, or something more definite like consequences of decisions we make. Our past has this ability to make us afraid of taking chances, whether it’s from past experiences, those experiences of our friends or our own perceptions of what may happen. It clouds reality, this fear, and we’re left trying to figure out how we can change it but trapped by the fear that keeps us from moving forward. Our mind has been trained by our past to make sure whatever bad thing that happened to us, our friends, family or in our dreams, never happens to us in real life. The thing is, if we constantly go through life being afraid of what may happen, how are we supposed to get to the times that make us happy?

Our past has this ability to hold us back. Our minds are constantly working in this force to make sure we’re protected, but in the end, they may be hurting us all in the long run. Do we really know what’s good for us? Somehow, I can’t help but wonder why we make the same mistakes over and over again with some things but with others, we’re so afraid to try something new for fear that it’ll bring on this change – even one that may be needed. We don’t like change. We don’t like the unknown. Yet we’ll continue to live lives that hurt us and lives that provide unhappiness due to fear.

A friend of mine told me this week that her cousin and her were having a heart to heart, and upon scanning her pictures, lingered on ones that I was in. He asked about me, she told him, and then she told me about it. I was flattered, and agreed to meet him, but at the same time, this flattery was quickly overshadowed by a feeling of being afraid to meet him. Afraid of not liking him, afraid of liking him and being hurt – and that’s when I realized that I think like that whenever I meet someone new. I’ll admit it; I’ve never been in a proper, real, give and take relationship. I’ve dated, yes. I’ve had a lot of experiences, yes – but they were never real to me. The guys I’ve seen or had somewhat relationships with, the short ones, the on and off ones, the confusing ones, down the line, I knew they were all guys it wouldn’t last long with. If I started in the beginning, knowing it wouldn’t work, I was protected from being truly hurt when it ended.

Regardless of my complexities with being scared, lately, I’ve been noticing that it’s been a running theme with people I know. A majority of the people I’m friends with are single – and from what I realized – all have a different fear when it comes to relationships. It’s what got me to thinking about this fear and why we have them and how we’re supposed to rid ourselves of them.

It doesn’t seem to go away, either. When I was there for a friend earlier this week – someone who is questioning a relationship she’s in, I didn’t know what advice to give her – because her fear was something I’ve never experienced. Her fear was abandonment by a prominent male figure in her life that she’s transferred onto whomever she meets in her present life, even though she was left so many years ago. This fear has kept her from establishing close relationships, even friendships, because of the lack of trust in people. She even told me that we’d probably not be as close as we are if it had not been for my persistence with our friendship (I’d sensed she’d had a lack of trust in people and wanted to prove her wrong in the initial stages of our friendship – because I knew how it felt not to trust people). As I am grateful that she’s opened herself up to me, I don’t want some guy to ruin it for her in the long run – to instil more fear when it comes to relationships.

Similarly, with another friend, while bored in class and doing quasi research for this post, I asked her about her fears and tried to see if there were any connections.

ME:
Are your parents still together?

HER:
No.

ME:
Do you talk to your dad?

HER:
Yea.

ME:
Do you have a complex about relationships because of it?

HER:
Yea.

ME:
Are you afraid of them?

HER:
Relationships?

ME:
Yea.

HER:
It just makes me avoid them.

And when she turned around back to her paper, I knew the conversation was over, I still didn’t have a full answer – but I’d made a connection.

Is it actually our past that controls our future or just our perceptions of what our future is going to hold, based on our past? We can’t change the past, but can we change our futures based on what we’ve learned in our past?

I have a love/hate relationship with relationships. My mother’s told me she just thinks it’s because I haven’t met the right guy yet, whereas I counteract with the possibility that maybe I’ve just not let the right guy in. Maybe we all concentrate on the wrong guys so much because we know, deep down, that the situation is wrong and therefore it’ll be less hurt once it’s over – once again, our minds “protecting us”.

I don’t know exactly what my fear is when it comes to relationships. I’m scared of losing myself when I’m in one. I’m scared of doing all the things to my friends that I hate being done to me when it comes to friends who are in relationships. I’m afraid of making the wrong choice – again. And I don’t know how to pinpoint exactly what the wrong choice is if I’m going to constantly be afraid of making a new one.

The question is –how? How do we get rid of these fears? What do we have to do? Keep getting our hearts broken? Keep taking those chances? Keep believing and if so – in what? What are we supposed to believe in if the same shit keeps on happening? What kind of advice should we be taking? Does it even matter? How much do our pasts really control our future?

The thing is, we’re so afraid, I get it. We’re afraid to do something drastic, ANYTHING drastic, because we’re afraid something that’s already happened to us, will happen again. But why are we so afraid? If it’s going to happen again, we’ve already gotten a preview – we already know what’s going to happen. And guess what?

We survived.

We got through it and can look back and see how those experiences have shaped our lives and helped mould who we are as people today. Whether it’s a father leaving, a boyfriend breaking your heart, the fear of being alone, someone making us feel ugly, the fear of abandonment, the fear of anything – it’s made us who we are.

Does that mean we’re afraid of ourselves? Some people might be – but as we got older, we realized that the only monsters in our closets were displaced sweaters and there really wasn’t anything in front of us in the dark – but the illusion was real. The illusion of something there was real and thus made the fear very much apparent.

But if it’s just an illusion, and we got through the monsters in the closet and the nothing in the dark, why do I have a night light in the hallway and a door on my closet? Because I’m preparing for the “just in case” and “what if”’s that seem to cloud my life. Maybe we all try to be so prepared that we don’t realize that sometimes we’re being a little ridiculous and need to step back from the fear and try to figure out if it may just be a