Fear is such a strange word. Everyone has them, regardless of whether they tell you they haven’t. Whether it is a fear of heights, closed in spaces, spiders, or more uncommon ones like butter or the color purple (I know people with fears of both!) Unfortunately, there are a lot of fears that can rule a person’s life. I know people who can’t take their children to circus’s as they are terrified off clowns, people who cannot drive as they are scared or crashing, people who can’t go into certain shops as they have lifts or escalators. But what about the kind of fear that can prevent someone from leaving their own house? From taking their children to the shops or the park alone? Unfortunately, that is the kind of fear that I suffer from.
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On the rare occasion that I manage to sleep peacefully, I wake each morning and check that my family are still there. If I’m not working the evening, I insist on staying by my daughter’s side until she is asleep, and have to check on her numerous times in the night. If I try to sleep, I constantly worry that I won’t wake up, or that I will wake and my family will not. My life is one filled with torment. I’m scared of dying. I can’t leave my house unaccompanied in case something happens to me. I’m scared to sleep in case I don’t wake up, and I leave my partner without his love, or my daughter without her mother.
The sound of ambulances, fire engines and police cars terrify me in case they are coming for a loved one. I check things are turned off at least 3 times before I’m satisfied, and cannot open my windows in case someone climbs in and attacks me. I can’t take baths and struggle to bath my daughter (for obvious reasons) so showers must suffice for us. Shopping trips are always interesting as I cannot leave my partners side, and insist that my daughter is always with me.
After asking a few questions and doing some research, I discovered it’s possible that I suffer from something called Thanatophobia. I don’t have counseling or take medication, I cannot talk to anyone about my fear, as talking about it means realising that it exists. Every day I try and push myself further towards fixing myself. My daughter goes to nursery 3 days a week, not only because she needs the socialisation, but mainly as I started seeing my own fearful traits in her, even though she isn’t yet 2 years old. I can sit and wait for a bus, and travel home, but most days I walk all the way there and back just in case the bus I was to catch crashes.
However, it is so difficult. I can’t listen to music whilst out in case I miss a noise, and cannot do anything to divert my concentration to my surroundings in case something happens. I insist on speaking to every member of my family every day to make sure they are all ok, and worry constantly if I do not hear from them by certain times. I have no rational explanation as to why I have this fear, aside from the fact that I have seen too much death. In the space of 4 years I have lost a grandparent, close work friend, best friend, close friend and their family member, watched a young man being killed in a traffic accident, my father almost dying and now my grandfather on deaths doorstep. So I guess that could be called rational. When I put my daughter to bed, I do it in tears in case it is the last time I ever get to see her face, and I make sure I tell her and my partner many times every day how much I love them and how I couldn’t live without them. My partner and I never argue, mainly because he understands how I feel inside, and I never get angry in case it is the last emotion someone remembers from me.
Although my brushes with death are in the past, my fear is something that has only surfaced since having my daughter. My doctor thinks it is a result of untreated post-natal depression and anxiety. I think it is because I now have someone so dependent on me that I can’t help but think what would happen if I weren’t there any more. I worry how my daughter will turn out, how kind and caring and beautiful she will be. I worry how my partner would cope on his own. I worry too much.
One day, maybe I will have the courage to do something more about my problem. Then again, knowing me, I’ll carry on suffering in silence.
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