Escaping Fear
As a kid, I was wildly horrified by sleeping in the dark. I’m sure that notion is similar with many of us growing up, worried about the monsters and demons lurking in the vast abyss when those lights cut off. In my case, it was never a case of monsters in the mythical sense. I was never worried about these Monsters Inc. type of creatures to escape from my bed or closet. It was deeper, rooted in a paralyzing fear of death.
I was cognizant of death’s existence far earlier than I should have been. I’ve frequently talked about growing up on 50 Cent and early G-Unit in my childhood before and how it provided a lot of joy for me. 50 was like a real life superhero to me as an adolescent. Being shot in the face 9 times almost seemed too good to be true, on top of the fact that he grew to be one of the biggest stars on the planet. His origin was Herculean and was my first definition of what it meant to be a superhero. I didn’t know about any of the comics until my middle school years. 50 Cent was that first example. What came with that was an extreme awareness and anxiety with death. The fact that someone could be gone from existence with such ease was something I wouldn’t have wished on anyone at my young age.
Even growing up in baptist churches early in elementary school, the concept of heaven and hell was terrifying. The idea that if I do enough bad things, I could burn forever is such a disgusting terror tactic. But man, it was so effective. Everything I did was stemmed from that fear, mixed with the looming threat of an ass whooping and extreme emotional and mental grief. Religion and death have an unbreakable relationship that strengthen each other and reigns nearly undefeated over society. Even when I tried accepting information from the baptist church or even the Jehovah’s Witnesses, aside from some fundamental differences, there was always the constant reminder that death looks me in the face. It bothered me every second of every sermon and meeting. In hindsight, I was living in paranoia and fear before I even stepped foot in kindergarten.
I’ve had a couple near death experiences that have left a mark on my psyche for a while. The one that’s always stuck out to me was when I was drowning. As a kid, I couldn’t swim for the longest time. The deep end gave me all the terrifying flashbacks of what death could unleash. I always stayed in the shallow side until my uncle (he won’t be named, he’s one of my many uncles) and his friends thought it was a good idea to try and bully me into going into the deep end. I was by myself, my mom inside attending to something else and I felt comfortable because I felt I could trust my uncle, despite his dimwitted friends. Yet, peer pressure led to them tossing me into the deep end, flailing around until I drowned. After coming out to see where I was, she noticed what happened and heroically dove in to save me. The one thing that really bothered me was the aftermath. My uncle looked frozen, as if he couldn’t believe what happened despite my insistence on not swimming in the deep end. I was escorted to the shower when the last thing I could’ve wanted was to be submerged in more water. I remember brief flashes of me just standing in the shower, trying to escape the reality of what happened. I tried to drown out everything with music on the stereo but all I could think about was drowning. I almost died.
Having to live with the knowledge of what death can bring only heightens my fears. My lack of risk-taking stems from how scared I am of death. One thing that always pops in my head is “stop being so fucking pussy.” Honestly, I get it. If I were to sit here and compare trauma and fears, I’ll surely pale in comparison. But that doesn’t lessen the fear. The lack of knowledge of what appears next still looms in my brain and takes the front seat in all my bouts with anxiety and depression. The one time I legitimately thought about killing myself was stopped minutes later because I was horrified by the potential outcome. If there was a comforting answer to what happens after death, it would be so much easier to accept. Yet, the fear of the unknown throws in the wild card about death. No one truly knows. It’s all gonna come from a place of belief and the practice of faith. That’s probably why religion remains so dominant. That fear of what happens next is blanketed by the idea that if we’re good people, we’ll be fine. Even as blurry as those lines are, it’s all about faith. If you believe, then it will be. That’s just never been enough for me.
Circling back to my fear of the dark as a youth, I used to pray every night to God to not only forgive me for my sins but to “protect me, my family, and my friends so we never die.” It’s wild how I remember exactly what I used to say. As admittedly selfish as it was for me not to pray for all the good people, it wasn’t immediate in my life. If it was just me, my family, and my friends, everything would be fine. That was the ritual every night. The idea was that if I prayed hard enough every night, maybe me and the people I cared about wouldn’t fall victim to death. Once that safety net was removed from under me, I was distant from death ever since. Even if I tried to believe, I never really knew. You just had to believe enough. I did a lot of believing as a kid and it still happened. There goes death at the door again.
I’ve been thinking a lot lately about those who have died this year. Putting myself in those positions paralyzed my body and kept me awake many sleepless nights. My brain would instantly transport me briefly to what those final moments must’ve been like. Kobe Bryant going down in the helicopter, Pop Smoke getting shot, George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, among many more Black men and women being gunned down by the police and failed by the law enforcement system. I keep imagining what it would be like to be in those last moments. All I could see was fear immersing you in the abyss. How does one even begin to be hopeful? There was so much more life to be lived with everyone that I named. Kobe Bryant was beyond just a basketball player, he was a philosophy. Pop Smoke was supposed to be in our lives for years to come. Mac Miller was beaming with light and fear entrapped him still. George Floyd was slowly fading into death for almost ten fucking minutes. There are Black people being fucking lynched in 2020 before they could even fucking graduate or legally drink. Don’t tell me it’s some “all lives matter” shit when those dying are at the hands of racist pigs that didn’t quite agree. Don’t tell me about no fucking bad apples when they watched in complicity until the life was sucked out of Black peoples’ bodies. I can’t fucking imagine the horror those final moments of consciousness were like. Death arrives all the same.
All that I’ve found comfort in were distractions but what happens when those distractions only make you feel worse? For every brief moment of tranquility, there’s a flash in my brain that I’ll die one day. Or that I’m not good enough. Or I’m a disappointment and everything I do will be pointless in the end. It’s all fear. Fear will make me question if I’m good enough and flash my mind to how my grandmother feels. She’s being tested for cancer soon. That fear has suffocated me in inaction for the past hour as I write this. What do I do when they’re no longer accessible? Sometimes, after a while, you get so used to having people you love around that you forget that time is so fleeting. When you’re Black, the fear that any time you pass by the police in fear that any moment could be the last in the wrong hands. They killing folks for sleeping in the Wendy’s parking lot. Why the fuck would I care if they burn that bitch down? How much is a life compared to those weak ass jobs and the overall capitalist structure? The prospect of my life being gone consumes my worst anxieties. The prospect of people that I care about no longer being there while I live with that void shakes me to my core. How does one escape?
I liken my relationship with fear and death to my drowning incident. No matter how much I try to run and flail, I remain anchored to the bottom. All that I could really do is to be there for those who are in those helpless positions. When there’s crooked ass police taking the sanctity of life from Black men and women, I have to be there. It’s what I’d want for me. My self preservation only means so much if I’m the only one that’s left in the end. There is no escape, only biding time. But I can’t let any of my guilt, my fear or my emotions consume me. I can’t keep living like this. I got to run this shit until the wheels fall off. Even if I’m on a treadmill to nowhere, with death and fear waiting to consume me, I have to run that marathon until it kills me. As scared as I am, to quote the late Nipsey Hussle, “the marathon continues.” I have to continue with it.
