Fear

I have been wracked with fear.  I wake up in the middle of the night with my heart racing, gasping for air.  During the day I am so afraid that it debilitates me.

Some of my fears are legitimate:  I am not currently employed, unemployment is running out and I don't have any of my savings left.  At 48 years old, with a young child, this is truly frightening.  I get that.  I am doing what I can to update my career credentials so that I can go back to work, and my former employer seems committed to having me back when this is accomplished, but I worry about how long it is taking.  I know that I should "let go and let God," but this past year, with the suffering and death of my father, I have lost my faith.  If I let go, who is there to help?

My father.  My hero.  My friend.  He died in August after nine months of rapid decline and ill health.  For nine months I was constantly in a state of fright/flight.  Every single day I had to fight with someone:  the doctors who couldn't say definitively what was wrong, the nurses who ignored him, the nursing home that neglected him, the insurance company that denied coverage, the family members who were of no help to me, and even my Dad who hated me because he couldn't stay in his apartment alone and blamed me for it.  Then there was the false hope that he would rally, that we would have more time together, that a miracle would happen.  There is nothing that sucks the life out of you than the realization that the hope you've been clinging to is a chimera.

I have been cold with fears of death.  In my darkest moments I have seen my future as one slow march toward nothingness.  I have been preoccupied with my health and convinced that I harbor cancer or life-threatening organ damage.  At one point, when I was really at a dark place, I felt that death was all around me.  I could not shake this preoccupation with death and my fear of it.

I recently read (and I wish I could credit it, but I will be more careful about that from now on) that grief sometimes takes the form of a fear and preoccupation with death.  It has only been months since my father died, and it is possible that I have not processed it all.  Or, this could be just a stage of my grief. I am going to be more cognizant of my feelings and try to deal with them in a healthy manner.