I am not a strong person. I am in fact, very weak. When I became weak – it wasn’t always this way – then I began to fear. Realizing I had no recourse to halt the decay I perceived in my actions and character, fear became the course. Presenting itself as a path of little resistance I presumed it to be an appropriate response to what I was going through, subsequently submitting to it’s withering effects.

micro philosophy on fear

There is fear and there are fears. To distinguish between the two is not important. Both senses perform as antitheses. The climax of fear is death. Fear displaces belief, which arrests action. When action is arrested, humans stop doing, which is to stop living. Life cannot grow upon the infertile soil of disbelief. If anything of human existence grows in a life full of fear, the substance of what grows is grotesquely misshapen and will never reach its full potential. We encounter these manifestations every day in our fellow humans as misbehavior, unkindness, all the way up to mental or social afflictions.

As with many things, nuances are present with fear too. Fear in the aforesaid paragraph, in my experience, is the more commonly occurring, negative force. With this form of fear I want to establish my claim. However, there is a good form of fear. As stated before, fear arrests action. With a wicked species, such as we are, it follows that we commit wicked deeds. Well, if fear is able to arrest some of our wicked deeds before their commission, how can we fault this form of fear? On the contrary, if we are concerned with righteousness, we find that this type of fear is necessary for universal order, being conducive to peace.

The question in this daily writing prompt implies that the fears in question are negative in form and deserve to be overcome. I’ll now spit some anecdotes.

knowledge of self

Indeed, I am a weak person. My sense of identity became compromised for the fear which inundated my perception of myself so much that it gave me a new and unwanted identity. Because I was hurting people. And some of those people I was even persecuting. If I tell you it was against my will you either take my word for it and believe me, or doubt that I am telling you the truth. You must know one of the fears I have overcome in this life is the fear of what people think of me or my reputation. So what you decide is of little consequence to me.

The first fear I remember overcoming was in 2004. Fear at this time was more my origin story than my birth certificate. It had infected every piece of me. Everybody was leaving for college except me. I was going to be stuck in St. Louis. It felt like I was being left behind. Add to that the personal circumstances of my downfall, loneliness was not only inevitable, but dreaded to the uttermost. Turns out isolation was exactly what I needed.

Throughout my primary education I was a follower. One of the first lessons I learned while my friends were away at college was how to be alone – how to stand on my own. The most disquieting thing can be stuck in the quiet with yourself – your thoughts, your waning ambitions, your guilt, your roiling feelings that you cannot control. This is the origin of who I am now. I conquered that initial quietness, and now I know how to truly be quiet. Before we go to the next thread in this quilt, I want to share a piece of advice that people in search of significant others often overlook.

look for yourself not a relationship

It goes like this…

If a person thinks they need someone else to make them happy, or the one thing missing from their life is a relationship – nah, they’re getting it wrong. This is the clearest sign that someone is not ready for a relationship. By asserting such naivete they proclaim a personal subscription to an unwise way of life. One must become content with and truly know themselves. Otherwise, what do they stand to give to the other person, but weakness?

trials

On the isolation of my personal Alcatraz I found wealth. Past the niceties and the banal vanity of what we say every day without heartfelt meaning, I began limiting my words. I was being subjected to seasons of life never before heard of. Life was like Robert Falcon Scott’s doomed expedition. I was cold, isolated, hungry, but I discovered myself inside and out. Even though it nearly killed me.

What’s up with this hazel-eyed hyperbole? Ha! If only it was! Demonic possession is not like a child’s sporting event. When they occupy you, they are playing for keeps. It is terrifying. They respect no law, no family ties, no lineage, no ambitions, no dreams, no love, no desire. When they come they come with a power greater than our mortal resistance. You can cry, you can scream, maybe you’ll make others cry and scream. Such dreadful havoc I have committed with my own hands and seen with my own eyes. I hurt her precious light brown flesh. My ears heard her eighteen-year old woman cries for her mother. Can you fathom what magnitude of fear inspires you to leave your own sanity when you see yourself do these things? If you’re able to shudder after reading this, you are a fraction nearer to grasping what I am spitting.

I wanted to end myself. At 19 it was a logical conclusion to preserve her and the commonwealth. Ripe, young, and utterly compromised by satan. I was sick and I was exposed. It’s no hyperbole when I say finding myself nearly killed me. Demons are very good at hiding. They conceal themselves until the surrounding climate is primed for maximum destruction. Loss of life is what they work for. Demonic possession is like riding in a car you are not in control of and it is heading straight for a crowd of innocents standing in front of a cliff with a lethal drop off. They want you to commit wickedness so your conscience is guilty. Then they want you to die so they get to torment you all over again, in their realm.

Mirrors to some are for measuring one’s own pomp. For me they hold memories of me staring at me, staring at satan, wondering what else he would do from within me to someone I loved. At the time of life when they occupied me, I loved one person, and it was her. When did my demons come out? They possessed me not when I was having arguments with my father, or friends. No. Their calculus had rightfully computed to damage me the most, they would come out when I was arguing with her. Why would they do this? Because the love that was between us, was slowly saving me from the effects of their work in my immediate family. They didnt want her to save me. My demons wanted to snuff out my life, and their appetite was truly voracious.

fear Inc.

Earlier I misspoke. The first fear I overcame was the fear that I was going to kill her. Then I feared I was going to lose her. I remembered fearing that she was going to go off to Mizzou and leave me for some jock (the lucid truth is that she never would’ve). I feared my life was over. I feared that I could never be with someone because of my sickness – whatever it was. I feared I wasn’t myself. I feared I was lost. I feared that I brought judgment upon myself and that I was going to Hell. I feared that my friends and my family would find out what I was doing to Allison. I feared I wasn’t a gentleman. I feared that I wasn’t cool. I feared I was adrift forever. I feared there was no way for me to be saved. I feared myself. I feared the police. I feared going to jail. I feared her parents. I feared I wasn’t smart enough. I feared I wasn’t good enough. There wasn’t a space in my life that wasn’t occupied by shuddering fear.

violence of an unloving father

I used to fear my earthly father. One night he came into my bedroom incensed that I wasn’t doing chores on the sabbath. This was because I had recently converted from catholicism to seventh-day adventism (I dont capitalize the proper nouns of denominations because it’s not important; you can tell the pope). In his rage he slammed me against a wall and I stared that man in his red face. I braced for punches that never came. The moment was ugly; very tragically, ugly. But I knew he no longer loved me from that time on. He was protesting and would’ve ended the very endeavor that was saving his son’s life. With his arm across my throat, and immediately after, I knew I was ready to die for my beliefs. After that moment I no longer feared him or any man.

The fear I have been subjected to in my life is, as of this day, immeasurable. But I tell you, it is overcome. When I search for it, I find only vestiges of memories that can no longer hurt me. If I search for them further, I come upon the counsels that vanquished them. Love unbound all of my fear. Even with that, it has not been easy. Stronger and resolved I may be, but these recollections make me weary.