I am aware of my own mortality. Some people might shrug and say, "Well, me too. People die all the time and eventually I will as well." Some people might cringe and tout their own invincibility: "I am 20, hear me roar." I think very few people would consider their life spans the way I consider my own. I think very few people are as afraid as I am.
I know I've talked about my fears before. You know that I am afraid of change, transitions, losing my sister, being wrong and my future. These are big fears that I can usually push aside until that time of night right before I fall asleep - the time when I open my eyes wide with concern then collapse into a deep slumber before the fears take any sort of tangible form. But there are little fears that plague me throughout the day, fears that cannot be shoved to the end of the day or to another time. These are immediate fears and they concern my life.
I am aware of my own mortality. I am afraid of dying. I'm not sure when this fear started to take the form of constant over-the-shoulder head turns, but it was a long time ago. When I was little, my sister, brother, father and I would play flashlight tag for hours. I loved the dark then; hiding in shadows and under bushes was exciting. Not long after this, though, the shadows turned menacing and the bushes malicious. Nothing bad happened to me in the dark, no tragedy convinced me that my life could be taken from me at any moment. I just got older.
I fell off of bikes and I watched as beloved family pets were buried. As I bled and my animals disappeared, I put two and two together and started to fear for my own life. Fear of the dark came first, naturally, because all bad things lurk in the dark. My father used to joke about the boogie man. When I played flashlight tag I giggled at the thought. A few years later I seemed to regress and shuddered at the idea of a large shadowy figure snatching me from my bed. The fear of leaving my house once the sun went down loomed larger every year. To this day I refuse to go out to my car in the dark; whatever I need will have to wait until morning.
My mother, sister, and I have a tradition in which we watch crime shows in my parents' bed. That is the only place one would want to watch programs about people getting stalked, raped and murdered. For years my sister and I have squealed under the safety of the king-sized bed's down comforter. My mother has fallen asleep before the show ends. My father has grunted when he realizes that he'll be sleeping on the couch while the three of us curl up with various cats and dogs and sleep off the nightmares of the stories we've just witnessed.
The combination of my own intensive self-awareness and my slight obsession with poorly made but fascinatingly horrifying crime shows has led to how I feel about life right now: I am afraid. I am afraid that when I walk back to my apartment at night, the kitchen knife stowed in my purse won't protect me the way I want it to. I am afraid that by simply bringing the knife along, I've acknowledged the presence of the unnamed masked man who will take me off the street and never bring me back. I am afraid that I will accidentally stab myself and I will die before I have affected enough people's lives; I am afraid my eulogy will not bring tears to enough people's eyes.
I know I am being morbid. But if you thought every guy in a trench coat walking into a library was trying to burn the place down, you'd be pretty morbid too. I know you could call my paranoia kind of funny. The nightmares I had throughout high school about the quiet kids bringing guns to school were unfounded. I would laugh with my friends: "I know, I can't believe I stayed up all night worrying about that!" But just because they were irrational doesn't mean they stopped.
I often write about my limitations. I often end up convincing myself that I should loosen up and live more freely, more wildly and more like a fun-loving college coed. But as many times as I've tried to stop going into my sister's room late at night to ask her to please check under my bed, I cannot put an end to my fear. I am aware of my own mortality and although I do not encourage this phobia, I do not want to take steps to "solve" it. I do not want to go to counseling so that someone can teach me not to cross the street when men with large hooded coats are headed my way.
The other night, walking home around 6, I figured I was safe from predators; it was dark but not so dark that I couldn't see through the shadows. No, nothing happened. But as a cat ran across the street, I stifled a scream, I realized that something could have happened. I stopped assuming I was safe, moved from the darkening sidewalk to the well-lit street and walked up the middle of it until I reached my apartment.
I know my fear can be unfounded and irrational and that people will continue to roll their eyes at me when I jump out of cabs after deciding the driver is sketchy, when I refuse to drive in a car smaller than an SUV because small cars get crushed in accidents, or when I text my mother my whereabouts because I understand her fear of my mortality as deeply as I understand my own. I am afraid, but I think owning this fear, in some small way, keeps me safe.
Connelly's column runs weekly on Thursdays. She can be reached at c.hardaway@cavalierdaily.com
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