I fear a lot, but I don’t fear death. I fear life, I fear love, I fear the future. 

Fear has always had a stronghold on my life. Most decisions I make are unfortunately based on fear. It’s a sad realisation. I did not realise it until my depression pushed me into therapy, forcing me to confront the ways in which my fear has manifested itself and when it first appeared. 

Throughout my twenties I thought that I needed to push away my fear, to the background or the side. I was taught to see fear as something useless in our current climate. As something that does not warrant the amount of attention I give it. I am supposed to fight my fear, to confront it head on and defeat it. My fear should be something unwanted, unloved, and something I should not care for or give attention to. That’s what I thought.

I have always seen the symptoms of my fear, the repercussions of my fear, but rarely was I able to pinpoint the base of my fear. Until last year. 2020 was a year in which fear became widespread. All of a sudden fear was not something that not I felt and carried with me. Others felt fear as well, others carried it as well. We were now told to confront it and work around it. To use our fear. One way or another, we were encouraged to acknowledge our fears. 

When I was three, I first was confronted with my fear. While living with my aunt and two younger cousins, I contracted malaria. It was not the first time I contracted malaria, but the severity of it was much worse this time around. I was shortly admitted into hospital due to dehydration and high fever. My mouth was covered in sores, making it impossible for me to eat. That was the first time I saw Death. I was laying down on the sofa in the living room, covered in blankets, sweating from the fever with limbs so limp I was unable to lift even a finger. Death was sitting on the edge of the coffee table, looking at me with sympathetic eyes, head occasionally bowed down facing the cracked cement floor. Watching him, my eyes slowly filled with tears. The tears were not those of fear, they were a sign of relief. I was relieved to see Death and I felt my heart beating hesitantly in my chest. Death looked me in the eye, smiled and said to me “it is not yet your time, beloved”, in a language I did not recognise but understood perfectly. My soul seemed to ask why. “You have a lot of life left in you, you are needed in the future”, he said. I did not understand. He stroked my head with his cool hand while releasing a smile. I sighed, not knowing if it was a sigh of relief, exhaustion or anxiety. Death kissed my clammy forehead and pinched my cheek. “Don’t worry, I won’t be far away. I’ll always be near.” So he left, left me and the physical manifestation of me on this earth. Left me to be with aunt, who loved me so. To be with my parents, of whom I was the only child. To be with my grandparents, to whom I was the first grandchild. To be with my two immediate younger cousins, who were more like my little brother and sister. I realised I could not leave them. They needed me, they all needed me. Their need for me created a sensation that I hadn’t felt before. I soon realised that that sensation was fear. Yet it was not a negative one, not yet.