All I had ever known was fear
Fear was all I had ever known for most of my life, becoming more of a friend than a foe. I knew fear lived inside me, how he drenched me, yet I couldn’t seem to wade him off, to cast him out. Even now, I find it a shame to make him homeless. My soul was—and still is—his comfort, and sometimes he sings to me. Most nights, he sings to me.
Do you know fear?
I met him at the fair. I was stranded with two cents and courage so feeble, everyone thought I was pretending. Then he came to me—running—like the horsemen, as if to save me. Oh, how I’ve wanted to be saved by men who knew nothing about me.
But Fear… Fear was different. At least he promised, for the first few days. He said cowards linger. He said he couldn’t imagine life without me. He said he had fallen madly, catastrophically in love with me.
There was something about the way he held me, as though I was fragile enough to melt under the sun. As though I was too weak to do anything at all. He hid me—out of love, from love. I don’t think he lied when he said he knew me. I don’t think he lied about how fond he’d grown of me. And I fed him—I fed him so much that I began to starve.
I think I fell in love with him too: his way of shielding me from anything that might hurt me, his back always turned toward reality to protect me. He became more than a man; he became a god. And oh, how I worshipped him.
As a lover, he was more than I had hoped. As a friend, he loved me just a little too much. A little less when I tried to be clear, a little less when I wanted to stand on my own, a little less when I wouldn’t offer him my hand.
It was the most tempestuous love—raw and unbidden—leaving me knowing nothing beyond it. Its absence felt achingly poignant on the days it wasn’t there. But one day, quietly, it began to feel like too much. One day, without warning, it began to choke me.
But Fear—I had not known him to be an aggressive lover. I had known him as the one who comforted me from all I desired but could not have. He wasn’t abusive; he was caring, obsessed, and enamored with the idea that we would be together forever.
But the truth is not always what it seems…
Fear had hidden me from my nothingness because it was so badly what I couldn’t imagine, the idea of life where I wasn’t anything, where I was a nobody. I spent days and nights with him writing scripts that would tear my heart apart, writing about a love that I didn’t understand. I had spent all this time trying not to become nothing. Suppose it wasn’t the worst thing, to matter, to be important, to feel like someone, to feel like I belonged. Oh, how he reminded me every day that one day, someday, I would become a star, that everything would change.
It’s ironic I know that fear was the drive of my ambition and not the rock blocking my path. Oh, we’ve all known him differently; he is a man who wears different skins.
One evening, he came back home in a rush, slamming the doors shut, a red coat over his broad shoulders. He screamed at me; he screamed so loud that I could hear the beating of my own heart. He accused me of running away from him.
And he was right—I was.
This affair had become too passionate, too consuming. I couldn’t leave without it, but I desperately needed to. I longed for the simple act of breathing, unburdened and free.
He yelled at me. His hands found my throat, gripping so tightly I could feel the weight of his madness. And he laughed—a chilling, hollow sound.
That night, he confessed through gritted teeth that he was madly in love. He swore he wouldn’t let me leave, wouldn’t allow me to destroy everything we had built together. But love should never feel like this.
He hurt me in ways that ran deeper than physical pain, his words cutting into me. The things he said—I can never erase them from my mind. They linger, day and night.
I didn’t want to leave him—I didn’t want to leave all we had built together. But there was a voice inside my head that was faint but insistent, whispering that it was time to let go. A part of me was exhausted, yearning for rest from the relentless passion of such a consuming, thirsty romance.
There was another part of me, fragile and cracking under the pressure of always striving, always needing to become something, someone.
And I wondered—how terrible would it really be to become nothing? To surrender to stillness, to let everything go? To become nothing at all?
I was going to run away; I had already planned my escape. I was going to live life on my own. It took every ounce of strength I had to realize that he wasn’t going to hold me back unless I allowed it. It was as if he had been programmed by my own subconscious, waiting for me to simply will him to leave.
Oh, how I fantasized about leaving him behind, escaping to the other side of the world where he could never find me again. I dreamed of a life so free, so liberating, that the very world would be disturbed by it.
I left.
It was months after starting over that I saw him again, in my town. He was watching me. I didn’t mind, but there was a sadness in his eyes that made me think he was a ghost, conjured by my imagination. He could’ve been.
I saw him smile, wave his hand, cower when I almost got hit running across the road. I saw him watching, following, just as I had only ever imagined him. I saw him every time I thought about him, and it’s been that way ever since.
I sit by the window with a cup of tea and he passes by with a coat painted murals of my future. He hides in the darkness under my bed, and I don’t think I can ever chase him away. I let him stay.
There are days I fight the urge to run back into his arms, to let him embrace me. But then I think, there’s no point in letting him live with such agony. We went from lovers to something I can’t fully explain. I know he is gone… but I feel him… every time.
……
Prose Poem © Nasubo T.
Image: Dall-E/Adobe Spark remix