...And the way that fear can really screw up lives. Below are a few stories that come to mind when I think about this topic. You may think of these as examples.
1.
The first story starts like this: This guy and girl fall in love. That happens the usual way it normally does, according to the same standard sequence: exposure, proximity, knowledge, understanding, affection, intimacy, and, eventually, love. Nothing new there. But there’s a key point in the ‘knowledge’ stage that the girl missed in the boy’s story: he can’t biologically father children, and what she wants more than anything in the world is to be a mother. But they’ve fallen in love, they love each other and love can conquer anything, right? Right? Wrong. Love sometimes can’t overcome fear. The guy starts freaking out about the girl constantly speaking about their future, their children, their life together as a family, etc. He sees the girl’s eyes beam with excitement and hope and expectation – expectations he can’t meet. So one day he tells her the part they skipped, that he can’t biologically father her children. Now, the girl having fallen absolutely in love with this guy, loving every part about him, loving him in the way only real love can be truly accepting, she tells him it doesn’t matter. Either they will find a way around his “problem” medically, they will adopt a child, or she will accept her life’s gift as loving that man she so whole-heartedly wants to share her life with. Happy endings seem in favour, right? Not once this horrible thing called fear sets in. The boy has his doubts. He loves this girl, he thinks he does, he would do almost anything for her, but he’s unsure about ending his singledom at such a young age. Of course, he doesn’t even understand this himself. He believes he truly loves her. He believes he is giving his all to this girl. He believes it will never work out. Eventually he tells this girl everything that is in his heart, everything except that truth he doesn’t even yet understand: he is scared of changing his life for a new one, even if that new life includes the person who loves him most in the universe. So when the boy tells the girl that he has to leave her, to end this once-great thing, he tells her that he loves her and that it is for that reason that he can’t be with her. Yes, fear does make us believe words like these are true. He tells her he wants her to be happy, to have her children like she previously planned, to have all she wants. He wants her happiness so much he is willing to sacrifice his own happiness in exchange for her fulfilling all her dreams. He doesn’t hear her say that it doesn’t matter, that the dream has changed, that he has now become an essential priority in her life without which the rest of it doesn’t make sense - with or without the children she (before meeting him) so badly wanted. He continues to tell her that it is LOVE that is forcing him make this decision, he tells himself this so often too that it feels like the truth. And that’s what fear can do to you; it’s like the devil disguising himself as an angel of light. It can make you believe that your actions are actually motivated by love and not that soul-sucking fear that ruins so many wonderful opportunities in this life.
2.
The second story is a little different. Here we have a woman of 27 years old. She is a girl who got used to always being the winner. She had the job she wanted, the apartment she wanted, the money she wanted, etc. She had everything except that thing she always wanted: to be loved by someone. Of course she didn’t like this because she wasn’t used to not having what she wanted and because life can be pretty lonely all by yourself. So one day she meets this guy who agrees to go out with her. They have a good time, he’s a nice person, and they share a lot of similar interests. She convinces herself that this guy is “the one” and so she does everything she can to secure him. She pleases him in every way he needs and wants. He doesn’t take advantage of her; no, he’s actually a nice guy, but she becomes too focused on convincing him that he must be the one that she starts scaring him away. Now, his fear isn’t so irrational because she’s quickly changing from the girl he was initially attracted to into this desperate girl he had no idea existed under that same skin. She starts smothering him with affection, wanting constant attention, feeling rejected and lashing out against him when she doesn’t get it, and basically overwhelming him in her “love”. Eventually he, of course, gets so scared of what she’s become and will become later on that he leaves her. That’s not irrational, the fear that killed the love in this situation was not that. The girl’s fear of being alone, of continuing lonely, of dying alone and without anyone was what killed it. She let this fear overwhelm her so much that it caused her to destroy her chances at having the very same thing she desired most: love, unconditional and undying love.
3.
Did you ever read that story ‘Oranges are Not the Only Fruit’ by Jeannette Winterson? The third story is about this – and this book was based on a true story so let me orientate you a little if you haven’t read it yet. It’s about this girl, a nice little white girl with freckles who come from a small village in England and who has a father that is a preacher. The whole family is quite religious – no, actually, VERY religious. They go to meetings several times a week, they sing hymns together, and every family has the aim that the boys of the family will become ministers and all the girls will grow up to be missionaries. The rule book says they have to marry another person from their faith, and, of course, this is so ingrained into everyone at such a early age that everyone wants this too. Anyhow, the thing with this girl is she meets another girl at a church meeting but this other girl is a little more risqué. Naturally, she develops an attraction towards this girl because she’s everything the good little church girl isn’t: confident, self-assured, brave, and daring. The friendly attraction develops into a crush and, slowly, into love. And basically that’s the premise of the book: two devoutly Christian girls having a love for each other that the rulebook condemns. So initially the girls embrace the challenge, they believe love isn’t wrong despite gender or religious creed, they believe THEY can make it. And, of course, it isn’t easy because it’s a small rural town, it’s the 1970s or so, there’s the “God will punish me; I’m going to go hell for this” thing, there’s the “my family will hate me for it” thing, there’s the “this isn’t normal (aka common)” thing. But they give it a go, and things aren’t easy but the girls truly are in love -or at least one of them is- and it’s worth it! Now, let me return to that statement of ‘at least one of them is’. What I mean to say is that perhaps they were both truly in love or maybe the good-girl fell in love but the other didn’t or vice versa, the result either way is the same: they (or at least one of them) allowed themselves to be defeated by fear. The end of the story is that the two girls separate, the ‘bad-girl’ to a life with a man and a kid, etc. The other girl moves on because what else can you do? You either fight to defend your team, your unit, or there is nothing there worth fighting for. At one point one of the girls let her fear of rejection from her family or her religious affiliates or God or society overshadow this thing she once claimed to feel: love. Or maybe it was even her own fear of letting another being into her world, her own need for control and self-sufficiency that scared her into cowardice. Either way, again, fear has kept two perfectly deserving human beings from experiencing this great blessing from God that is love.
4.
The last story is a rather common one. Basically, this boy falls in love with this girl and the girl, because she is bored in her life, decides to go along with this ‘love story’. They start dating, sleeping together, hanging out for extendedly longer and longer periods of time, etc. Eventually he reaches the stage when he is sure he is in love with her so he tells her so. He says the first “I love you”. She doesn’t know yet that they’re more than just words, she doesn’t yet know what love in any form means at all, so she says it back to him too. He believes it! So they go on as if ‘in love’. Now, while the guy has gone on in his head planning his and this girl’s lives together, she hasn’t stopped living hers the way she was before. She is still sexually-involved with other acquaintances, she still uses drugs to numb the pain of her troubled childhood, she still plans to move away overseas (with or without the boy in question). Of course, he doesn’t know this. So eventually it all falls apart when the boy naturally finds out. It falls apart because the girl let it. This girl had never known a loyal love, never experienced real love from someone who wasn’t trying to just take advantage of her, and she hadn’t yet learnt to love herself. One thing she did know very well was fear, to run from that which seems frightful and with potential to leave you vulnerable and hurt, to have a back-up or escape plan to avoid this, to not allow yourself to not be in control in the situation. This thing her boyfriend spoke about, this “love”, required self-sacrifice not just survival. It required trust, which she had taken from her from a very early age. It required a little courage to just allow things to evolve, but she had a desperate need for control if she was to avoid her childhood repeating itself. Underneath it all she did one day hope that she would either learn to be purely self-reliant with no actual need for other human beings in her life, or that she would meet someone who wasn’t like all the people that had betrayed her trust in the past. But the possibility of both those things was scary and so she ran. The boy got over it – because, seriously, no-one ever really dies from heartbreak.
Why am I telling you these stories? Because I’m heartbroken.
Some people when they leave you will tell you that they will never love again. They tell you this as if it mattered. It doesn’t. As long as you’re alive, there’s always the possibility of falling in love again. And it doesn’t matter! Who you love only matters to the person you love and there’s no shame in loving again, the same way there is no honour in not loving again. There’s the possibility of anything in this world, why not love? It’s great!
Thanks for reading.
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