the sea in a storm,
a night with no moon,
and the anger of a gentle man"
Patrick Rothfuss, The Wise Man's Fear
Because I'm not wise, nor a man, I've decided to adapt the quote to something a bit more appropriate. Therefore, paraphrasing Rothfuss, it would be something like that.
"There are four things all fool women fear:
the feeling of failure,
facing rejection,
experiencing pain,
and being loved and in love"
Failure, rejection, pain, and love. It's an odd choice of fears. But these are my most profound fears. It doesn't mean that I don't have others, but the others I find ways to fight, ways to tell myself that they are irrational and stupid. But for these ones, there is nothing I can truly do.
The fears of failure and rejection have always come entwined, ingrained from early childhood. I was never allowed to fail, if I fell I always had to stand up and try again, do better, be the best. I was the best. This fear has led me to be extremely competitive and push myself further than even my environment does. It has led me to say "Maybe" instead of "I can't do it", "I'll try to" instead of "It is impossible". This fear makes me try harder. Put like this it seems like a good thing, everyone should aim to be their best. But my best is not enough, I always need to be more, do more, because otherwise I'm failing, and the sole thought is terrifying. Rejection is it's sister in my mind, because if I fail I'll be rejected. It has played quite a big role on shaping who I am, my old friend rejection. I was always the different one at school, standing apart from my peers, because I was sensitive and overreacting, because I was smart, and because, in their words, I was fat and ugly. Children and teens can be cruel, and I felt rejected. I was rejected because I failed to be like them. I was rejected for who I was. Everytime I've been rejected in my life, I've felt that it was my fault, that I've failed to be what the other person expected from me. Every time I fail I fear that I won't be given a second chance.
Pain is a fear that has evolved throughout time. It's something organic that feeds in my soul. First, it was fear to physical pain, as I had excruciating knee pain that made me want to cry when I walked. By then I woke up every morning wondering whether I would be able to walk normally or I would have to crawl my way around the streets. The constant pain made me feel powerless, made me want to rip my knees apart. I've broken several bones during my lifetime, and have cried an equal amount of times because of the pain, or even more, but that was nothing to the fear of not knowing whether you're going to be in pain for the whole day or not. Now, that my body is as whole as it can be and the only pain I experience is when I workout too hard (or when I fall from my bike and break something), I fear psychological pain. I have experienced some breakdowns in my life, mainly from pushing myself too hard, from being too responsible. And now I fear feeling my mind break down, letting the flow of emotions free and destroying everything on its way. I fear being so sad that smiling makes my heart hurt. I fear the dull pain of knowing that there is something missing. I fear the moment all of it is going to be too much and I'll have another breakdown. I fear the moment my mind is going to shatter into a thousand pieces and it will never be whole again, if it ever was. The worse part is that there's no stopping this pain, that most of the times I'm inflicting it onto myself, I'm the one who takes the axe and buries it deep making metaphorical blood flow.
The last pain is possibly the strangest of the four. No one fears love, or maybe no one has ever considered if they do. The realization that I fear love is a quite new one. It does take some time to realize that you fear love, on one hand because we are always told that love is a good thing, that we need to pursue it, on the other, because there is no way you can say that you fear love without looking like a sociopath. But I do, I fear love. Or maybe I fear the idea of what I think love is like. And I think I fear love because to me it's a combination of my previous three fears. It is fear of failure, of thinking that I won't be able to make it work. It is fear of rejection, of opening myself to someone else and having them reject me for my flaws, for being too demanding, too overwhelming, too cold at times. It is fear of pain, of heartbreak, of the pain you only experience when you love more than you're loved, when you care so much for someone that you feel like someone is ripping your soul apart.
These are the fears of my life. And they might be irrational, but they are mine.
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