Negative Space
a rumination on fear
I heard the telltale noise from the kitchen. I’m sure you can guess which one by now. A high-pitched clink that rang through the house. I hopped off my spot on the couch to run damage control. I felt the same usual spike in my blood pressure, but it was coupled with something tamer. Comedy. The timing felt nothing short of cosmically designed. This is what I’d been writing about ad nauseum, and here it was playing out. Just leave it. I cleared the eight or so feet between the living room and kitchen. I’ll take care of it. I cataloged the cleanup in my head even though I already knew it by heart. I felt overly self-aware of my own predictable thought process, promising myself not to step into the rigid grandmother persona. I guess I’d finally reached the right moment to start unpacking that little gem of self-discovery.
But the moment never came. As I walked into the kitchen, my boyfriend proudly held up a seasoning bottle, still intact despite a fall from the top of the refrigerator. The only injury it had sustained was a crack in the lid. He touted the superior quality of his favorite brand of spice, but I was still focused on what didn’t happen, watching the ground where glass should be. As he joked about our luck, I inspected the bottle, running the pad of my thumb softly over the edges. I was sure I’d find a divot that would send me searching the kitchen floor.
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So much of fear is being consumed by what may never come. The future is the force that keeps fear in motion. This is what drove me to understand symbolic fears. Broken glass happens. A bauble shatters on the ground. You pick it up and you carry on with your day. So why do I hate it so much? I’ve found that the origin point of everything scary is simple fear, but the theoretical endpoint is the worst-case scenario. Broken glass distorts into a lack of control. Birds turn into an infectious disease that wipes out your whole family. Sharks in a swimming pool eat you. Symbolic fear, anxiety, phobia, terror. Whatever name you use, they can all still end in the same thorny spot—horror. It is the strange dystopian space where the thing you feared most does play out. The car crashes. The dog bites. You can’t quite be surprised by it, but the feeling is akin to that of being hurled into darkness without a light or a firm hold on the ground. It feels wrong. Left unbridled, any episode of fear can end in horror—even if it only ever happens in your mind. And I often let my fears wander around like free-range chickens.
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Fears bleed into each other, weave in and out of one another. I have sometimes written myself in circles—why am I here? Am I just scared? Here is what I knew I didn’t want to learn. I didn’t need to learn that fear is productive or helpful. Yes, anxiety can get you good grades and a diploma from an upstanding university. It’s also a constant mindfuck. I could’ve just hired a therapist to tell me that. I didn’t need to learn quick Pinterest tips to tame my inner demons. You won’t be finding breathing exercises or essential oil blends here. I didn’t need to learn how to fix fear. That's a fool's errand.
So, I’ve been left with this—understanding. If I’m going to fret over broken glass, I might as well know why. Perhaps all this has given me is a performative sort of personal clarity. But there was a moment in the kitchen, suspended in time as I waited for something to break, that I wanted the fear to come. Let me have this, damn it. I’d taken this fear out of its box, played with it, deconstructed it, and set it back on the shelf. It wasn’t gone, but I knew what made it tick. I wanted the moment to come. To handle it with just a touch more knowing. To find something resembling resilience.
My thumb kept running circles around the bottle. It was like running through a house of mirrors. I was so certain that I was walking into disaster that the clean floor and unharmed bottle left me standing stunned. I wasn’t sure what to do with all of the kinetic energy propelling me into darkness. No planning, no shaky hands, no rituals. I prepared for the catch of skin on glass, but it was smooth. Untouched by the impact.