“I am not afraid.”

Ramble #6

Fear and love. This is what the world operates on. These principles are everywhere apparent, and have been absorbed by popular culture to mean nothing. I can remember what it was like to be truly afraid, that every decision I made was a mistake; That I had put my life onto the rails of the mundane express, and that I was heading nowhere quickly. I was afraid. Afraid of confronting myself, and behaving in a noble manner. I acted primarily out of fear. Sucking down cigarettes, and drinking myself into a stupor, attempting to gain a drunks courage. This drove me further down into the depths of my own fear. This made my terror of existence all encompassing. I acted poorly towards people who loved me. I shirked responsibility for fleeting pleasures. Afraid and alone in my own mind, with my own insecurity and the voice of my conscious driving me slowly mad. I can remember being in my mothers womb. I remember the fear she felt of giving birth to me. Nineteen years old, and pregnant with the baby of a man, who had also impregnated another woman two months earlier. I can feel her heart beating in her old room of my grandparents house in the bronx. I can smell what the room was like. I can feel her dreams fading, and the places she wished to go, edging out of her perceptions. “I don’t even know who this man is..” I can hear her thinking this. I can feel the fear like a force of gravity pressing down around me…