The studio barn, at night

July 2, 2008 – So many of the people reading this site share a common interest in animals, and their stories and dramas, and that is what a lot of the blog is about. But once in awhile, I post something and stumble upon a vein – a thread – that is rich and powerful, and that gives me in return all kinds of messages that are nearly hypnotic in their power and thought.
  This happened with my writing about my encounter with mental illness last winter, and in a different way, happens when I write about Rose and work, about online forums, and of course, Lenore and Brutus.
  It happened most strikingly last week when I wrote about fear. I suspect fear is one of the things that makes us feel alone, and in my curious position, living on a remote farm, yet in touch with many thousands of people several times a day – isn’t this an odd convergence of lifestyles? – I am often reminded, as I was last year, that we are not in fact, alone.
  I appreciate the fact that a conversation about me quickly becomes a broader conversation, as it should, a wheel that keeps turning.
  “I appreciate your thoughts about fear,” wrote Suzanne from Minneapolis, “and I was surprised (pleasantly) that you confessed so easily to being frightened. I thought it was just me. And I think you are right. Fear is a space, and you just have to cross it sometimes. And it never goes away, does it?”
  I can’t say for sure, not being qualified, but I do not believe it will ever go away for me.
  Upbeat messages do not, in themselves, eliminate fear or control it, and I have a dread of sounding anything like those squishy people on TV selling empowerment.
  Fear is like skin to me, an integral part of my life for as long as I can remember. Fear used to terrify and paralyze and sometimes seem to push life itself away from me, it was so preoccupying and absorbing.
  Something happened to me when I was eleven years old and I remember thinking that night that this was simply not going to be the story of my life, although it would always be a part of it.
  I told myself that it wasn’t going to end that way, that feeling was not going to define who I was and what I did.  I decided that if fear was always going to be there, it was going to become a choice.
  Sometimes I would listen to it, sometimes not. It would not run me.
  And so my story did not end that way, and it does not define what I do and who I am. And it is always there.
  It is, in fact, a space, a choice, and if I had a magic wand I would make it go away in all its hateful glory, but since I don’t, I will accept its presence and learn to live with it. I suspect that just about everyone knows fear, and noone need feel alone with it, or be crushed by its great weight.
   Nobody can make fear go away, surely not me. It serves its own purpose, in its own way. And in its own place.