Brave new world

When I was fourteen years old, I had a humiliating secret. Time and again, I tried to talk myself out of it, but nothing helped. It was childish, and I was old enough to know better, but that only compounded my anxieties.

I was afraid of monsters.

There were two spacious closets in my teenage bedroom, and I checked them compulsively every night before going to sleep. I’d ease open the doors, reach in up to my armpit, like a country vet assisting a birthing cow, then in one swift motion shove aside the formal dresses, caped in their slippery dry cleaner bags, that my mom kept at the far ends of each space. I looked for shapes, eyes, disgusting feet. Monsters always have disgusting feet.

Once the closets had been probed, I dropped to my knees to check underneath the antique spindle bed which had been my mother’s and her mother’s before that. I was one hundred percent sure they hadn’t worried about monsters. This was my special shortcoming, my personal hell.

By the time I turned sixteen, the monsters had morphed into nefarious types, humans who might act like monsters, a Bogeyman with evil plans. My security rituals continued right on up to college where, fortunately, they diminished save for one vestige: I hated being the last one awake at night.

Thirty-two. That’s how old I was when I found myself counting erratic contractions as my first pregnancy culminated in what would turn out to be a protracted, unproductive labor. My mother, bless her, had driven up to be with me for the big event which was finally getting into gear about a week past the due date. She slept silently in the soon-to-be baby’s room while my husband snored in ours.

Restless with anticipation and on high alert, I was heavy with self-pity on the living room couch. I wanted a companion, a night-watchman to mark the hours while assuring me that all was well. I wanted someone to destroy my demons with small talk. I did not want to be the only one not sleeping. I was scared, and it made me feel ridiculous. How could someone my age and no stranger to adventure have this kind of neurosis? How would I ever raise children if I couldn’t get my shit together? My anxiety sat back on its hideous haunches and licked its lips.  

Had it occurred to me, back then, to question my negative opinion of myself, I might have started by looking up the meaning of the word coward. This week’s Google search brought forth definitions that I’ve been chewing on for days. My favorite is from the Oxford English Dictionary. Coward. Noun. A person who lacks the courage to do or endure dangerous or unpleasant things.

To do or endure? Seriously? I’d done endured this nonsense for years!

Okay, so what about courage? Courage. Noun. The ability to do something that frightens one. In my teens, every time I thrust my skinny arm into the guts of a closet, I held my breath, afraid that might be the night it all went down. But that didn’t stop me from doing it. In my twenties and beyond, there were countless times I was last to hit the hay, which evoked a stress response that made me jumpy and resentful, but I managed. I kept at it.

This is big news. This changes everything. All those years I dreaded the shadows, I might have been nervous, but I wasn’t without nerve!

I don’t want to suggest, with my example, that the face of our fear is always within arm’s reach, nor that we don’t deserve to be scared, scarred, and depleted by the battles we are asked to fight. There are those who confront more formidable foes than I have ever imagined. In some instances, let’s be honest, their monsters have looked a little like me. The oppressed and abused, the wounded and sick, the ones whose lives are filled with pain and loss – they are the truest heroes, the bravest souls. That they carry on at all is commendable. That they usually manage to persist in believing day follows night is the most courageous act of all.

I never found the solution for my problem. The solution found me. It arrived on the heels of my children and the shoulders of my responsibilities. My kids’ fears supplanted my own. Monsters in my babies’ lives? Over my dead body! Awake long after the rest of the household went quiet? Fine. Especially if it meant dreaming up ways to protect someone I love. Over time, I came to respect the night, the murmur of its voices, the power of its magic.  What I didn’t expect was to discover now, so many years later, is that I’d been brave all along.

I have a hunch you’re a lot like me.

~Elizabeth