Fear.

We all have experienced this feeling. Whether it was when you thought you were going to fail an exam, fail a class, you were walking home alone by yourself, you saw someone that you loved gets hurt, or even staring into the eyes of someone you loved that was about to do the unthinkable and completely destroy your self-esteem. It follows us wherever we go. I can say that I have definitely changed because of the fear that I have experienced. Even if you have not directly had the same experience as someone else, we all know what each other is thinking when some describe a day that truly scared them.

I read this theory and did not even think about it until the other day when I heard from my fear. The psychological theory that one of my professor mentioned in class one day was that we all have an intuition about our fears, almost to a point where we are our own experts in violence. Nobody can truly escape seeing violence and being around it in some way while growing up. All you have to do is walk into a restaurant and see a couple yelling at each other to get a glimpse at some violence in everyday life. Our brain tells us to be scared of specific things, situation and people, in order to make sure that we survive every day. The brain registers danger and then make you act in a specific way in order to disassociate yourself from the fear.

My Experience

For the purposes of this story, I will call this fear Jamie just to make sure that this story is free for anyone to read and listen to, even Jamie.

I was finally free. I was free from waking up crying, free from walking on constant eggshells, free from wondering how I would mess up Jamie's day and how somehow I would be enemy #1. I never noticed these unhealthy behaviors until we were done.

After a month of no talking, I was still hurt and still trying to pick up the pieces and understand what just happened to me. I was a carefree person that loved everyone. I would have given anything to Jamie. Then, I was used and thrown out like last week's garbage. I thought it was clear when Jamie never reached out after that first month that I was finally done. We would never talk again and we would never see each other...wrong.

A normal Monday morning, I was sitting in a dining hall and Jamie comes and sits down as if nothing had ever happened. We were friends according to Jamie, even though Jamie tore me apart piece by piece and never showed me any mercy. This was the same person that had continually called me an immature five-year-old, dumb, stupid, and annoying. The person that was not there for me when I was in serious condition in the emergency room because he had a group project. The same Jamie.

The same one that after I held myself together when he sat down next to me, asked me to dinner with him. The same one that I cannot even stand to look at.

That's when I knew that my brain had figured out that I should fear Jamie.

Suddenly, it felt like I was in a daily attack because I would see Jamie almost every day throughout the next year. The normal blank stare. The usual bags under his eyes that would somehow make me want to feel sorry for him. The pictures that popped up on my social media where he still did not truly look happy. Still, I wondered if he had changed. Was everyone new in his life being treated the same way because why did he not seem any different? However, it is at the point now where I do not even recognize him. All I think about when I see him is that that cannot be the person that utterly destroyed me

I would see Jamie on anywhere and, for some reason, I would start breathing very quickly and my heart would start racing. I would turn and run in the other direction. It may not even be Jamie, but it looked like my fear and that was all it would take. Jamie would never hit me, but just being near him brought back all of the memories of everything that happened behind closed doors. Everything. Then, the nightmares would start again. They were worse than seeing him. It would be dark and I would just be staring into Jamie's dead eyes, knowing he did not love me and that it would not matter to him if I fell off the face of the earth. Just a soulless brown of nothingness.

Jamie did not even know what he was responsible for and was still open to having me in his life. I yelled at him for about thirty minutes on the phone the day after next, hoping that maybe he would get the message. After that, he had someone else in his life, so I should be safe...wrong again.

I started having to go to therapy because, when I closed my eyes, I only saw his figure in my head. I only remembered the memories of everything that was said to me and everything that was done to me. Everything that I had blamed myself so long for.

Jamie tried to talk to me while I was walking to my next class and I tried to be nice, but I just couldn't. My head started racing and I started to feel sick. I said that I was really busy and then ran into the nearest restroom to throw up as soon as possible.

Jamie reached out to me one day while I was on campus saying that he was not sure if I still had his sweatshirt. I said no and thought that that was thought, but I still remember that he looked at me as if he wanted to say more. He looked at me as if he was trying to say "We are not finished yet." That look still plays back to me in my nightmares. But, now its just me trying to be okay with everything, it is done...nope.

I heard from Jamie a few days ago letting me know that he had found his sweatshirt. Again, this is weird because we are not friends and we have basically been avoiding each other because I do not trust him anywhere near me. However, I still feel uneasy. For me, this is enough now to let me know that Jamie is my fear. I am scared that he does not understand what a relationship is. I am afraid that he is not done with me yet. I am afraid that he is going to come back for more.

Still, even though I know that I am scared of Jamie, I am ready to let Jamie think that I am not scared of this fear. I am ready to stand up straight and walk around as if I own campus. I am ready to tell the fear how amazing I am now that I am no longer anywhere near the fear.

What now?

Now that you know all of this, what do you do with it? For me, it opens up my eyes to all of the times that I knew that I needed to get Jamie away from me as quickly as possible. It reminds me every single day whenever something bad happened to me that I still need to stay away. It always allows me to realize that I should have decided this a long time ago. I should have stood up and faced my free inside of being nice. It also allows me to see that my brain knew what was going on when my heart did not want to attempt it.

So, whenever you get that fear, make sure you never forget that it is your brain's way of trying to help you survive. It is your body telling you to stop trying to help the other person and worry about your own survival.

If you don't worry about your own survival, you else will.