Fear May Be My New Favourite Emotion
Red Light or Yellow? There’s a difference, and it’s a big one.
Not to be confused with the panic of immediate threat to life and limb, nor with the anxiety and paranoia that accompany so many debilitating mental illnesses, fear — the kind of dread that stops us from stepping forward into an unknown future — is one powerful emotion.
I have never been more terrified than I was in the days and weeks after my husband died. I was 48 years old. I had five teenagers. No friends. No job. Ancient credentials. I was overweight and out of shape. (Yeah, and he was the one who died.) And now I had to face life without the only person I ever trusted, my best friend, number one cheerleader, and pretty much the only thing holding me up.
I spent 23½ hours out of every 24 trying to figure out how to swap places with him.
I’m sure there was sadness, and grief, anger, and frustration. But every emotion I might have had during that first year was eclipsed in spectacular fashion by a pure black and palpable fear.
For a while I was distracted by the busy — the phone calls and letters and shutting down accounts and filing this, that, and the other thing. I was nothing if not organized and competent. The tedium of having to close his life kept my mind occupied.
