You know, don't you know?

There were a lot of things in life I was scared of.  Although--the past tense shouldn't fool you.  I am still scared of many things in life.  But to be more specific, when I was very young, I was scared of the dark and all lingering unknowns that lived in perfect hide-away spots.  I ran quickly away from mirrors after turning off the light when leaving a room, I made sure my feet did not dangle from the bed before falling asleep, and I most certainly stayed far away from the monster in the laundry room (whom I was certain ate half of my socks).

It wasn't long before I learned how to deal with my fear of what laid in the unknown.  It first began with stuffed animals.  I delegated my favorite few as protectors to border the edges of my bed, especially in the spaces my back faced.  I loved my stuffed animals, and I actually believed they could be aware of their surroundings, even if--and especially if--I was asleep.  I assumed then that they loved me too and would want to protect me without hesitation.  I slept soundly this way.

When I got older, though not much older, my fears began to grow with my imagination.  I needed glasses at quite a young age, and I remember beginning to fear that some monsters and ghosts could only be seen without glasses and some only with.  I also started wondering if portals could open by touch, like secret hallways opened by a booby-trapped bookshelf. So, I feared leaning back on walls at night, from the fear of mistakingly falling through another dimension.

But for every new fear my imagination created, my logic grew to beat it.  Though I was young, I suppose I was smart.  I noticed that in each singular phenomenon, the distress only came through times I had been unaware of something.  So I tried my best to stay well-informed in all situations.  I assured myself, if I ever had an inkling something was amiss, all I had to do was figure it out.  If I were wearing my glasses, I would simply look over the lenses to study what was in front of me.  I began to reason portals were only doorways; I'd touch with my fingers before allowing my whole self to fall through.  These responses may seem simple now, but when you're scared of something, anything can seem like the impossible.  But my fears didn't last long, because once I figured a way to deal with them, they only became a puzzle I learned the solution to.  And everyone knows that when you skip to the solutions at the end of a puzzle book, the answer would always be clear in every following time you faced the puzzle.  And nobody worries about the easy stuff.

So my fears today.  I still have them, though they don't come in imaginative shapes and forms.  Most of the time, they're still intangible concepts.  I fear failure, disapproval, and global warming. And most of the time, my fears freak me out to the point where it becomes hard for me to sleep.  Except now, there are no stuffed animals.  Just the people who love me, but sometimes my fears take me over so badly, I end up taking out my fears on them.  Now even worse, I've somehow become my own monster.  Though I often so badly just want the answer, many times I don't feel like I can figure it out.  So here I am, I'm scared.  I thought of this tonight: I'm still a scared person.

That's when I began to wonder, could this feeling of being scared be its own fear of the unknown?  Stepping back from the manifestations fear can take, fear itself is something humans simply do not know how to overcome completely.  Fear is constantly, and for eternity by definition, our belief that something is likely to be harmful or dangerous.  Maybe we can never completely overcome fear; it seems inconceivable to ever find evidence against something before it happens.  So until then, we are left wondering not knowing for when it--or if it--ever happens.  But instead, is there a way to control our fears, to know that it's okay to be scared, in order to keep it from controlling us?  Instead of running away from the things we fear inside ourselves, maybe the first thing we need to do is just to acknowledge exactly what it is that we are scared of.  And then, we can take on the task of finding the solution to the hurdles we face.  Not that it's easy but, you know... it can be less scary than you imagine.