The Fear of Water

All my life I’ve had this fear of being in deep or dark waters.

Over the years, as I have gotten older, I have accumulated, it seems, more things to be fearful of.

I have this morbid fear of being hospitalized, of being placed under sedation or anesthesia, of having surgery.  These fears have made  decision making  regarding my own health a little problematic and anxiety-ridden.

I have been postponing certain routine exams I should have done years ago for fear of knowing what it might show.  In my daily struggles with anemia, I have been foregoing surgery to deal with the root cause once and for all.

The past months I have been battling these fears. There is a nagging voice at the back of my head that keeps saying: “what if, what if, what if?”

The prospect of going under sedation, much more under the knife and the possible aftermath of it keeps me from knowing, and from moving on.

I guess the underlying fear that I have is the fear of the unknown.

Perhaps, all of of us have this fear.

We fear flying because we don’t know if the airplane will be safe. We fear the dark because we don’t know what lurks there.  We fear losing our jobs, our homes, our spouses, because we don’t know how  we will be able to survive without them. We fear leaving our kids because we don’t know what will happen to them when we are gone. We fear dying so much because we don’t know what happens when we die.

And though fear, as a primeval instinct, is crucial to our survival, when it cripples and  paralyzes us it becomes unnatural, detrimental, if not deadly.

I waited for almost two months to get my endoscopy and colonoscopy done and now it’s done.  There was really nothing to it.  The entire procedure took only a few minutes and the results were favorable. Had the results been unfavorable, would knowing have made the difference?  Absolutely.  Knowing takes the fear out of the unknown.  It readies me for the battle.  Once the enemy is out of the shrubs and the darkness, I can fight it.  But without any idea where they are and when they would jump at me, I could only crouch and cringe shrouded by my own fears.

Most of the time, though,  there is no enemy.  There is no monster lurking in the darkness.  I need only turn on the light.  The turning on of the light  might be the hardest part for me but if I look at it from this perspective it sounds silly to remain scared and cowering in the dark when I could only flip the switch on and see.

Now I understand why   my son would rather sleep with the door to his room open.  With the door open he knows what's out there.

A famous person once said:  “There is nothing to fear but fear itself.”

And so I say: “’tis true, ‘tis true.”