My mother once told me that there’s two emotions in the world; love and fear. Everything else stems from those two emotions. Hate can come from the fear of loss, the fear of jealousy, or even the love of a bad habit. Fear and love are what shapes the conscious of survival and production, in all beings. Although, why do we have fear if it is so scary and traumatizing as the joy of love? Without the negative balance, we wouldn’t be able to appreciate the good things in life. The origin of fear comes from our deepest desires, and our character is the result of that. William R. Roalfe notes in his 1929 book The Psychology of Fear that, “Every living thing seeks that which gives it pleasure and avoids that which inflicts pain. This is a fundamental law which life cannot escape... in our world, pain is just as essential as pleasure and the one could not exist without the presence of the other.”

Fear itself has looked at me upon many ages. The earliest I can remember is the fear of those I looked up to; the fear of loss, of punishment, of desperation. When I was about eight years old, my parents decided to get a divorce. Three years before that they should have decided to do so, and it wasn’t finalized until two years after their decision. I am the oldest of three biological daughters. What I learned was that people need to take their anger out somewhere, even on those they love. My parents did so, all while demonizing the other parent in hopes to make a good case in court.  I chose not to take any biases on either parent, in fear of losing one if I did. The sensations of fear is part of memories I obtained while I was young. T he first I can recall I was shaky, confused, terrified. Unable to understand why what I did was wrong, why I was so in trouble. Ruby, my younger sister, the middle sister, wasn’t eating her dinner, thus I the hungry growing eldest, took her mashed potatoes without permission. My mother had it and rebuked me, her anger so focused on that misdemeanor of mine. Afterwards I apologized to Ruby for stealing her mashed potatoes, to which her response was, “It’s okay.” It’s okay, she says to this day, it is the term she uses that with her eyes tells you, “No, I’m sorry, this isn’t your fault.” Ruby, I’m convinced, is more noble and stronger and wiser than I am, for even then she knew my mom was feeling as victimized as I was.
I wish someone had told me sooner that fear is a losing game, and like love, will easily win you over. Sweaty palms, short breathes, rocks in your stomach, shaky limbs, light sensitivity, fogged mindset, migraines, and twitchy nerves. Those are the manifestations of fear. They do not change, they do not make things better. “Just breathe,” friends say, but when you’re afraid they seem insane. “They don’t know what they’re even talking about,” you think. So you pray. Personally I’m of a pretty liberal religion, no weekly reinforcement of the constant praise for the higher spirit. However, fear makes me pray, because I have faith that somehow the fear will vanish, and the worse will subdue. I’d always done so, with faith, even as a young one who didn’t quite fully grasp the idea of “God,” let alone obedience. As a matter of fact, I believed for a while that the term “God” was a magic word; you said it with your palms pressed together in front of your heart, make a wish, then boom, your wish came true. This ritual of prayer was what I did when I was afraid.

As an adult, I still feel that way, except with a better understanding. As a child, you know only what your parents tell you, which then of course the young mind uses it’s natural creativity to exaggerate things even more so (which gets beaten out of us through the modern educational system unfortunately). Today, I am afraid of what others may say about a specific action I’ve done, or the grade I may get back, or even what will happen if I put myself in certain situations, because I know I am possibly risking the welfare of myself or others. I have learned that when adults yell at you despite your own innocence, that it is not your fault. People have so much pain and sadness inside of themselves sometimes, that it scares them, so they have the need to bring others down. I didn’t understand that until I was in high school.

I often wonder, is all fear bad? Such an analytical question could arouse a debater, yet I think a proper conclusion could be that fear doesn’t need to come from your parents during a divorce, or when your spouse leaves you, or when you are awaiting news from the doctor about the stomach pains you’ve been having recently. A systematic fear can come from scary movies, books, other forms of entertainment... hell, even Halloween, but do we resent them? I guess at times, fear seems to be a form of love; a passion for trepidation, an appreciation for danger, like spicy food and preforming in front of people. Some of us are able to use that adrenaline and become addicted. Like my dad, he has a joy of gory movies, riding dangerous rides, and the spicy mashed potatoes at Domatio’s Pizza, the same ones Ruby never has as he always eat them for her.
Many of us have that fear living within the back of our minds and the bottom of our hearts. Afraid of growing up and not succeeding, afraid of crawling into a bottle to comfort our miseries, the fear of a parent who may have already done so, the fear of loosing a love, never obtaining love, and so on. There are some who simply do not care and live freely among the temptations of reality, while there are some who wallow within their own shadow, hoping to someday be rescued from being trapped in their own minds. Do not be those who wallow; my father never said so, but he reinforced it mtaphorically. For example, he himself is a man who chooses to live in the present, accepting the past for what it is, accepting the future for what it will, and accepting the present as who he has always been. He does not live in fear. He is a hero, one who is not afraid of the dark, of seeing scary movies, of confronting home intruders in the middle of the night, breaking a bone every now and then, and even confronting mice and spiders and snakes.

  I was told that being fearless is part of being a man, and if you’re not like that within our society, then consider yourself and outcast. I wanted to be like that, though, as a kid I wanted to give off that heroic, somewhat manly essence. Although, the other girls in my class weren’t tomboys, nor did they like spicy food and scary books. My dad never served in the military, but it meant a lot to me that he is able to do such things with his courage while I am scared of the dark, even today. I guess that’s what made me an outcast as a child, I tried to be what my natural disposition hadn’t set me up to be. My mother is similar in the way she instals fear more than my dad ever could, yet can make it disappear with just a single expression of emotion. A talent, a torment, a mother’s love. I guess that’s the beauty of love and hate and family; they’re all part of the scale of which shapes who we are, our character. Even if it means being reprimanded for stealing Ruby’s mashed potatoes.