Afraid of Nothing

How can I begin to describe the fear? It takes over your body and doesn’t let you move or breathe. It makes your head spin and brings up every emotion all at once. The fear takes things away from you and says you didn’t want them anyway. You didn’t deserve them anyway. The fear can shapeshift too. It can disguise itself as sadness and make you feel completely alone, shivering in the dampness of the dark. The shadow of fear cast over you is blinding and it muffles your screams, gagging you with thick dread of what lies before you: nothing. Nothing is what you fear most.

I used to think I found comfort in nothingness. I liked being alone because in those moments I didn’t have to pretend to be something, and pretending was so exhausting anyway. Nothing mattered. Nothing was there to protect me. I could hide and I could be anything and nothing at the same time. Isolation made me free. Most of the time I feel trapped in this body and this brain. It feels foreign and fake to me and I feel cheated because I didn’t ask for this anyway. But who is to blame? I never wanted this, and nothing is to blame.

Here are my thoughts on death: we were nothing before we were born, we are nothing all through life, and we are nothing after we die. We are alone. Sometimes when I stand with a group of people, a circle, formed around each echoing monologue, I am not physically alone, but I feel far away. I realize I am looking through an invisible screen at a world in which I do not reside. They don’t see me of course, I am merely a shadow. I am a ball of nothing, and in this realization I recognize the fear of being alone. So when I say we are nothing, I mean I am nothing and everything else is something that exists outside. Even in a crowd I am alone. And when I die there will be nothing after. I have been told all my life that everything matters, that money is valuable (even a penny), that being an obedient child, a loving sibling, a good friend, an outstanding citizen matters. I have been told to care about everything I eat, wear, say, do, think when none of it really matters until I believe it does. And in that I finally have a choice; I choose what matters and I choose what means nothing. Everything else is a consequence of existing. There are consequences of existing and consequences of living. The former occurs by default and out of other people’s choices. It’s out of your control. The latter comes out from how you choose to live. You are the driver and you make the route. you choose what matters.

Oregon mattered to me, so I went. A good friend invited me on a five-day road trip to Portland to help her move, and how could I say no? Something deep inside me was stirring and I needed to find out what it was and what it could mean for me. I quit my job, packed a backpack, and went to find out what there was out there, even if it was nothing. Turns out I found something to care about. There was something I wanted out there. Maybe it was just anonymity, or isolation. Maybe it really was nothing and I was content with that. Whatever it was, I was finally happy and not afraid of anything. Isn’t that really what we’re afraid of? Anything. At least Nothing is certain. At least Nothing is familiar. But Anything? That’s a lot of choices.

Death is certain, so I’m not afraid of it. It’s the living that’s hard. Life is scary because there are many choices to be made, and what if I choose the wrong thing? The truth is it doesn’t matter what road I choose because they all have potholes. What matters is how I drive. I’m on rocky terrain with bad tires and no headlights so it can be difficult to navigate, but I don’t know where I’m going anyway. I’ve done some work on this vehicle that struggles through life and sometimes doesn’t sound great when it starts. I start and stop and start again because what else is there to do? I drove to Portland in a Kia Soul Full of Stuff and didn’t look back (I literally couldn’t look through the back windshield). We drove through places I had only seen on postcards and saw what I had always hoped I would be: beautiful, unblemished, unadulterated Something. It was all different and yet, the same. Every sunset was the same sun I had always seen in Ohio, but this was somehow different and new. There was a new horizon, and with it, a new perspective. That was, after all, what I was searching for.

New sun, new stars, new sky. There was Anything in those mountains in the distance. I could be anything if I wanted and nothing mattered if I wanted it to. Out there, in the slopes of mountains I’d only dreamed of, in the forest I’d only read about in books, on an endless road stretching to the sea, I found something to care about. I wanted the possibility of Anything so badly that when I had it I was shocked. I never knew it before, but there it was and I had made it. You can never hold on to Anything though. It’s too slippery and you barely recognize when you have it. I was overwhelmed and I didn’t know what to do with myself. Oregon was beautiful and hot and full of Anything, but I couldn’t stay because I still cared about the Nothing back home. I thought I had seen everything I came to see and maybe it was time to go back to reality. Anything was too good to be true after all. So I left Anything behind and returned to Nothing in the dead of night on a humid Monday in August. I left myself in Portland too. When I came back to Nothing and I had nothing and I was nothing, I didn’t know what to do, so I did nothing. And now with Anything being so far away everything feels unreal, unmanageable, hopeless. Maybe that is what I fear most. I really am afraid of Nothing.