Fear

The fact that I found myself being so frightened the other night when I thought there was someone in my basement, got me to thinking about being afraid. I mentioned that I've always tended to be afraid when alone in a house (as opposed to an apartment). Now why is that? Actually, there are two questions there: why frightened in a house but not an apartment, and why frightened at all?

Well, I think I answered the first question in my last note: in an apartment there are people all around, people who would hear should you start screaming, should furniture start getting thrown around as you try to fight off your attacker. In a house there's all that space between you and your neighbors. You're essentially trapped in your own little box with whatever the danger is.

But as to the fear itself, what, exactly, am I afraid of? Being murdered in my bed? While I'm not afraid of death, I suppose I am afraid of violence. I'm afraid of being physically hurt. Quite literally I am afraid of a crazed "ax murderer," or someone with a knife. Getting hacked or stabbed, whether or not it's to the death, has got to hurt! And one doesn't, somehow, think of home invaders as just coming in and shooting people, quick, clean.

I've never in my life watched one of those Friday the 13th movies, in which teenagers or lone females are first terrorized, then slashed to death by some manically cackling fiend. But I've seen the occasional brief clip, and I've assimilated, the way we do all kinds of cultural knowledge, what they're about, the gist of them. These are way unlikely scenarios that, nonetheless, suggest unpleasant possibilities. Once the mind has had a possibility suggested to it, particularly a possibility that would negatively impact the Self, it's extremely difficult to wipe that possibility from the mind (and why is that? I suppose because self-protection is such a high priority for the organism. My psychologist friends will have to tell me...)

Like every other woman, I'm afraid of being raped, although it's not the sexual congress I'm afraid of, it's the violence that would inevitably accompany it. Rape is certainly a much more likely scenario for a woman living alone than being hacked to death. I am not physically strong, could not successfully fight off an adrenalin-charged male, not unless I could get a good grip on his balls. So I'm afraid of suddenly finding myself at some creep's mercy. Some creep with a knife.

But even when I was quite young, and had no inkling of slashers or rapists, I would be afraid when, for example, my parents would go out for the evening, and leave me in charge of my younger brothers and sisters (the youngest I ever was when this took place was 14; that's what I mean by "very young"). The least unfamiliar sound would spook me. And there what I think I was fearing was the unknown. What – or who – is making that sound? If I don't know I can't prepare myself, can't know if I'm equipped to deal with it. I don't want to be unpleasantly surprised! I usually supposed it was either a burglar or a peeping Tom, and felt ill-equipped to deal with either one.

This fear of the unknown of course accounts for the very common fear of death. We don't know what lies beyond death. Will we be equipped to deal with it? Do unpleasant surprises await us? Those of us who are very religious may, indeed, be convinced that we do know, and that "knowledge" may give us courage in the face of death. But for the rest of us – and I suspect even for the faithful, in fleeting, unguarded moments – there is this sense of an abyss that we would be stepping into. The fires of hell, with eternal pain and suffering? That's what I was brought up to believe awaited non-believers, and once an unpleasant possibility has been suggested to the mind...

Or simply non-being? And if the latter...what's so bad about non-being? Nothing to deal with there. No coping necessary.

No, it's not death that's the scary part. It's the getting there.