What Happens After You?

The Big Fear.

I never realized how afraid of everything I was, until recently. I can't tell you if that's the way I've always been, because I don't know. I can tell you though, that I've always bitten off all my nails, and that I was never fond of most things. As children, we tend to be more oblivious to most fears. I can't tell you if I was. I know that there are a lot more things that I worry about now. But that's just the way life is.
Everybody gets their one traumatic incident. You know, the one that makes them afraid of that one thing for the rest of their lives. I don't think you ever really get over it. I think it kind of always sits there in the back of your mind, and you just expect it. I think the anticipation is what makes us afraid.
I'm afraid of the sea. The ocean. The waves, the sound, the depth of it all. But not the water. Water is something I've always loved. I think that's what attracted me to the ocean in the first place. Until it didn't. For five years of my life, I lived in Seattle. While there isn't much of a surfing scene up there, my family still managed to make it to the freezing water anyway. By then, I wasn't afraid. My dad loved the water. If he wasn't afraid, then I figured I shouldn't have been. We rode the fairy boats almost every weekend. The large boats where they load up your car so you can make it across Puget Sound. Most of the time, my parents wouldn't let me out of the car, but I wanted to be. I wanted to look over the edge, and see what I could see. Sometimes we did get out of the car, and look over the edge. Even when we talked about the cold water, and jellyfish that could sting you, and the whales that could've swallowed little seven year old me whole, something still urged me to want to be in the water. But when I was, I never waded any deeper than my waist.
I'm afraid of things I don't know. The small but strong realization that people don't actually know as much about the ocean as they think they do, put the cherry on top for me. That, and I didn't have the person that fueled my fearlessness anymore. I think that is what started the second fear. By the age of ten, I was back living in the state where I was born. Colorado. Not knowing what was going to happen didn't really bother me at the time. But I know it was always sitting in the back of my mind.
As a kid, I had always wanted to grow up. I've come to learn that's something most kids want. To be an adult and do things their own way. To stop being told what to do. I think the age of 13 is when I started dreading my next birthday. Started dreading the idea of high school, and growing up. I had an idea of what I wanted to do. But it soon came to pass that what I wanted wasn't as realistic as I thought. So I gave up at the very time I was being told that I had to figure my life out. I don't really like the feeling of being lost. In fact, as I've come to find out, I don't really like feelings at all.
I believe that some of the things that I fear are probably things that everyone goes through. But I know most of them aren't. Most of the ones caused by things that have happened to me, aren't. The biggest one isn't.
How do you explain to someone who asks the question to simply get to know you, something so deep? Something with so many stories, and so much trauma and fear rooted in it that it isn't something you tell just anyone? You don't. If you're like me, you say something like, the fear of open ocean. You don't tell them you're afraid of your own feelings. That you're afraid of everything that inflicts them. That you compartmentalize things so that your brain treats them as if they're gone, when in reality, you've just kept them there long enough that you don't even notice they exist anymore. And you certainly don't tell them that you'll never open those boxes willingly again, in fear that they're still there. Or in fear that they aren't.
What makes this so unique, is that it isn't just the feelings that are bad. No, it's all of them. All of them have their own little place, and while some are more pleasant than others, you still want none of them.