Playing House with Fear

Intergenerational fears

Oct 18, 2024

Dear life,

Last night my mom and I stood in her kitchen talking until the oven timer read 1 am. We were both jet lagged, and staying up beyond hours we usually do together. How arbitrary time can be. It can be folded and refolded with such ease.

I gave her a pep talk on life, and how it can’t be put aside. Pleasure and fun cannot be put aside. The brain will always find a reason for why later is better. It will do this until you’re dead.

How do you know all this?, she asks me.

When I was younger I feared becoming my mother. Now I see how futile that is, and how funny—in the way all truthful things are. I am my mother. I have always been and will always be my mother. Her fears are my own. I wear them in my body. I carry them in my stomach and on my shoulders. I call them back pain. I call them digestive issues. I parse through them slowly.

But I am also myself. No one else in my family has this brain, this heart, or this body. No one else has my distinction. No one else is a writer.

We all think we are so distinct. I think of myself as such a clear “I,” and begin most paragraphs speaking from this place. But the fears I live with so intimately do not solely belong to me. They have many intimate companions. They don’t have allegiance to any one mind. I’m not the only one that is afraid to do things alone, that doesn’t want to be seen as a fool, that wants to keep myself safe. My mom’s vocalizing of her fears reminds me this. I can speak to them intimately because I live with them too.

Last month, while driving, I had the thought that my life was over. I go to work, I come home from work, I cook food, I go to bed. It’s over, the voice said.

I was on the freeway while it said this. Distracted, and focused on getting to my destination. Fear speaks so confidently when it thinks I’m not listening. But sometimes the thoughts are so striking that you hear them for what they are. You hear the background script distinctly. It wasn’t my voice, but it had taken up the largest bedroom in my head.

I decided to go to the river the next day, even if no one wanted to go with me. Then I went again the following week. And I decided I was going to apply to grad school in this cycle because the only reason I had for not doing that was because I was afraid.

Now my mom tells me her life is over. I suspect that it becomes even easier to agree with this when you are older. Society sides with our negative criticism. Your life is over, it says, and fear says, Um yes, I’ve been telling you this all along!! It’s over!

My head said this to me when I was 24. Your sense of adventure is gone. It was attached to a boyfriend with a truck, who took you on long road trips. You don’t have it anymore. It left with him.

Then I found myself in the desert a year later, watching the sunrise from tall rocks, and feeling completely in awe.

It told me this at 27, after another breakup. You’ll never hike again. You only did that with him. Good luck finding someone else to do that with!

In San Diego? Where people love to be outside? Where there is a strong culture of outdoor activities? Believe me, it wasn’t that hard to find someone to hike with.

Fear wants to keep me so safe. It wants me wrapped in a tight little box where it can watch me at all time. It is so afraid of something happening to me. It loves me, I suspect, but it doesn’t want me to be happy. It doesn’t care much about happiness. It only cares about making sure I am safe.

Fear, I know, is attached to trauma. I’ve gone to therapy. I know that I don’t only carry my own thoughts and feelings. I’m not only my mother. I’m my mother’s mother, and her mother, and every person before me. They weren’t always safe. I have not always been safe. I suspect fear thinks it can make up for lost time.

My mom and I talk until we get too tired to speak coherently. I go to bed across from a lake I used to walk to when my mom and I got into bad fights. I put on leopard print pajamas I wore in a shared bedroom with someone I can’t remember the birthday of now. Here I am over ten years later. I am still so afraid, but I have also done so many things. Life has changed me. Joy, pain, and experience have changed me. Fear still lays coiled in my stomach, but I’ve poked at it.

The fear isn’t a separate part of me. It’s not going away. I know that trying to remove it is a fruitless action. Instead, I play house. I make it a room in my own head where it can lie safely. Lay back awhile, I say. Busy yourself with this crossword puzzle.

I have work to do.

On Earth

Discussion about this post