Living Fear

LIVING FEAR

Gemma knew she was unique. Without fear and with no light, she investigated noises in dark corners of her basement. She couldn’t explain it, but she always felt odd.

It was the whispers she heard in the wind. Little things animals and trees told her. Energy she saw and sensed between organisms, like spiderwebs connecting one being to another.

Her differences she accepted no questions asked. Because not many people see the influence that connects everything, she rarely spoke of it to anyone. Gemma believed she was the only one who saw it.

She experienced a strong connection to her Universal force. The Universe asked, and Gemma supplied. The girl shared her vitality with all beings who needed healing.

Theirs was a mutually beneficial relationship. She wrote down what she desired, and the Universe provided. She created her life exactly as she wanted and gave her love and power so others might pay it forward. Gemma almost took for granted how easily things came to her.

But today was unlike any other day in her whole life. She went through “the sickness” …. came out the other end of it… and still, she believed the same about the connectedness of her world. Until now. Now, she seemed disconnected. The lines of light between beings abruptly vanished. She was utterly alone.

Today, she saw new phantoms. They were not comforting. They were darkness. Dread. They took shape, deliberately shifting with each blink of her eye, every drift of her thought.

Her first shadow she called “Return”. Return, an enormous dollop of a shade, varied in fast and slow-paced movements. This gray blob meant many things to Gemma: illness, agony, and misery that came from healing “the sickness.” This mass broke Gemma’s immunity system. Return had the possibility of swallowing her host whole.

Her second shadow, Gemma named “Abandon”. Abandon also had multiple meanings, but he was a wisp of gloom. Quiet, yet undeniable in his strength.

This darkness embodied both being abandoned by those she loved and the freedom she experienced when she lost control of herself. Abandon was frightening because of his constant presence, his power, his speed, and his reckless whimsy.

Gemma’s third shadow was “Dependence”. Although this gloomy waif offered much charm in his youthful exuberance, he was slow to depart when Gemma wished him away.

Dependence kept her healing energy down, as he danced on the joy others experienced in helping his host. While Gemma wanted to discourage this shade from growing, she also understood she must provide her loved ones with the opportunity to give to her. So Dependence grew thin but wide, enveloping Gemma before she was ready to accept him.

Gemma gathered her courage, took a gulp of iced tea, and in her mind’s eye, gazed at each phantom in turn. To turn them into allies, she had to discuss her situation with each shadow. She needed to listen to their desires and demands as well as any extra grievances or any pets they had.

Ultimately, the girl decided she must make these looming fears her friends. And friendship is about listening, caring, and relating. Relationships require compromise and support. Each of Gemma’s shadows required his or her place in the sun of Gemma’s love and attention.

“Return,” said Gemma, “where are you in my body? Where is the discomfort you create?”

Gemma’s body answered, “Return is taking over my nervous system. Over here, in my neck. In my wrists. In my sinuses! – Over there, in the blurry vision of my eyes.” Wow! So many places this shadow hides, with bits of her exposed from within the reservoir of her host.

Focusing on her neck, Gemma went inside. The girl caught a glimpse of her first terror as she clung to a bone-spur on the edge of her second vertebrae. She held out her arms, mentally, toward the part of the fear hiding there, ready to send Return love. The shade glided into her hosts emotional arms. With a sigh, the darkness released her grip on Gemma’s neck.

Next she focused on her right wrist. Part of Return peaked out from under her extensor retinaculum, un-trapping her host's radial nerve and relieving the tingling in the girl's right hand and fingers. Again, she opened her emotional arms to give this darkness a hug and much needed love and understanding. This part of the shadowy fear melted beneath Gemma’s loving touch.

Gemma checked her sinuses… The first shade shot back a warning, shaking her head, and wagging a single shaded finger… “um-um-umuh” signaled the fear to her host, unwilling to let go of her stronghold. The girl recognized now might not be the time to ease this section of anxiety and retreated in fatigue but not defeat.

Abandon wisped by in front of Return and caught his host's attention briefly. He was hard to track down. Good thing the previous shadow was huge enough to make Gemma concentrate on her for a longer stretch. Return… that dread of a shadow lay in what other people wanted of Gemma rather than what she wanted for herself.

Like dead weight Return hovered over her host's eyes making it difficult for the girl to view anything else. The shadow's weight caused angina in her chest and a strain in her left foot. Gemma wanted to focus on the future, but this fear's size, weight and sorrow forced her to remain the girl’s center of attention for the time being. Was it her imagination, or was the shadow smaller? Gemma asked Return to show herself.

Although she considered herself a failure for giving in to the results of surviving her sickness, Gemma intellectually recognized she was doing the right thing for her physical and mental health. How did she know?

Return had become lighter and was almost half the size she had been when she first caught her host's attention. The girl could investigate and make friends with the other two formidable shadows that lurked deep within herself.

Abandon… Gemma searched for the darting darkness deep inside. There he was, ready to be dealt with or befriended. The girl was determined to make friends with this wisp of a shade as he dodged her gaze and went to the back of her neck.

She had not noticed before, but Abandon held hands with Dependence. So, the two were linked in some way. Rather than try to talk with Abandon, who dodged in and out of view, Gemma asked the final shadow what was going on with him.

She saw the dark blob peek out of her neck and glide down her arms. Dependence was in the back of the girl's head at the same time he was in her hands and feet. But being so thin, this shade needed Return and Abandon to make his physical presence felt, except in Gemma’s eyes.

Blurring her sight, explained her third fear, was a trick he had learned from the girl's medication. When he wanted Gemma's attention, he pulled himself together and doubled or tripled his thinness, to become thicker and harder to see through. He was able to do this best when his host was tired or angry, he explained.

Ah, the girl understood.

Dependence’s biggest role was in obstructing her vision. He grinned at Gemma when she shared her newfound knowledge with him.

He needed time, attention, love and most importantly, appreciation. Without allowing Dependence to exist in the past, she unwittingly opened the way for this fear to grow. Her failure to make peace with him, becoming resentful instead, made the darkness of his shade grow thicker.

Peacefully, she went to bed believing in the morning she and her terrors would be friends. She thought she had figured it — her shadows — out.

Gemma slept. Her fears gathered. Her attempts at friendship with each one threatened their very existence. They were aware of their host's goal. They were not happy.

In the quiet of nighttime, they conspired to unite. Whispering and drifting past one another, holding hands, intertwining, giggling with frenzied joy as they spun into their new form with grim purpose and praised one another for their tenacity. They were swift and they were bold. They were determined to be in focus – all three of them, permanently.

There was no true morning for Gemma. In her catatonic state, she did not respond to her loved ones. Instead, in a small corner of the dark recesses of her mind Gemma hid, glimpsing her enormous, grinning terrors through the gaps in her fingers she imagined she held over her eyes.

Return, Abandon and Dependence joined as one, floated by Gemma again and again, in a blurred, varietal shade of grey and black. She was rendered powerless and frozen as she watched her shadows gleefully take turns squelching her light like three candle snuffs putting out the flame of her life.