Fear is a Hell of a Thing
As of late, I have seen a lot of fear being pushed out into the world. That fear is showing up in half-provided information, vague messages being blasted out to the masses with people saying “well, I don’t need to explain it, it’s my post”. Well, no shit, it is your post. But what in your heart is causing you to invoke fear in people who are afraid of what is happening around the world? Why doesn’t your conscience speak up and say, “Hold on, what purpose is this going to serve?”
The internet itself was a gift I believe. But that gift came without rules, and at some point, the hive mind kicked in, and everyone went with it. And people can’t blame themselves for the hive mind. It happens, and you don’t realize it because everyone around you is in that same hive. And when someone calls it out, they might get attacked from someone who isn’t taking the time to hear instead of react. The internet, specifically social media, is a hive mind no matter which side you’re on. Let me put it this way for you. A single social media platform is a seed. Everyone on that platform exists inside that seed, and the overall vibe in that seed is chaos and separation of individuals and groups. Some groups NEED to be separated, but everyone inside that seed is being fed nutrients from the same source that wants to keep you in chaos and never grow into something. You think you’re being watered, but you’re just being poisoned. Some may say they can get rid of social media but still perpetuate the hive mind mentality, and that comes with fear. You’re in that seed, you’re subscribing to the hive mind. And if you don’t find yourself trying to get out of it at the sight of negativity, you’re allowing yourself to be in the hive and only pick up what is working for you.
Why not pick up what is working for you elsewhere and leave the hive alone?
For me personally, I believe social media has become the place to go for some to try and scare someone based on how they view the world. And then you have those that say “oh it’s an algorithm so you’re only seeing what you engage with” and that leads people to believe they are crazy for trying to enjoy an online social space and being attacked with negativity when they never engaged with it. You’re not crazy.
PLEASE STOP THAT ALGORITHM BS RESPONSE. Social media has become a place where chaos and fear can keep people in control. Growing up, I lived in locations where fear is the only thing that kept you alive. It kept you from being jumped, it kept you from being shot, it kept you from being hungry, and most importantly it kept you going another day. That fear has been haunting me my entire life and I no longer live in locations where I have to use that fear. But removing myself from those locations where fear was required caused it to stay with me when it is no longer needed. And getting rid of it was and still is a battle. So it has been something that I’ve been figuring out in therapy and beginning to use it to push me forward.
Fear comes from not knowing. And we can’t know everything which means fear can’t be avoided. But what I have been learning is that the more you know about the fear, the less fearful you will be. There are hard truths out there that we have to accept. Like death. Fear exists there because we truly cannot tell 100% for certain what happens from a personal perspective and what happens after. No one can determine that when you look at just the facts. Whatever spiritual belief you have I am NOT attacking it or talking about it. I am speaking from my perspective (even though I was raised super Christian and no longer subscribe to it). But then there are soft truths we can accept that can ease fear. Something simple would be there is no true monster that will go bump in the night out of nowhere. At some point, someone told you to be afraid of the dark even though you were born from darkness. You were in the womb drifting in peace. Darkness is peace.
I’m not entirely sure when I conquered fear myself or if I even conquered it, but I can recall moments that made me question what makes me feel fear, if I should continue holding that fear, and how to transfer that fear to another location within. I want to share with you something that happened to me as a kid that has been a source of strength for me in the face of fear.
I was around six or seven years old when my mother was dating a man named Charles. At the time of this incident, they had been dating for a few weeks, no more than a month and a half. He’d buy us Burger King and take us to my grandma’s house when she still lived in Chicago, and we lived in the far suburbs of Chicago. I still remember that Rugrats watch they had in their kids meal. Admittedly, I thought Charles was a good person from a kid’s perspective. The fear I had come to know did not exist yet until one incident.
At the time, it was only my mom and four other siblings trying to survive after living in shelters and being homeless all under the age of 12. In our apartment, there were three bedrooms upstairs: my mom’s, my sisters’, and the one I shared with my brother. The five of us gathered in the boys’ room while Charles and my mom were in her room with the door closed. My siblings thought it would be a fun game to send me to knock on the door and ask for things. By this point, I was already the awkward one in the family, so they thought, “Why not get a laugh?” The first two times, my mom got up and answered the door, and I’d say, “Oh, siblings’ name wants this” or “*siblings’ name* asked me to ask you. . .”. The questions were dumb, but I didn’t think anything of it. I was a kid having fun with their siblings that finally let me be involved.
But that third question? That is the question where fear marched into my life, and I experienced something I never thought would happen. The third time I went back and knocked, my mom flung the door open, and Charles was sitting up in the bed, just started yelling at me. Spit flying out of his mouth type yelling at me. He says, “Come in and close the door.” I go in, and my mom closes the door, and she goes to stand by the window looking out. Not once did I see her look away from the window during the event to come. Charles is shirtless in bed with the blanket covering his waist down with a gold chain on, and I’m standing in the middle of the floor, tears running down my face because this man I barely know is just yelling at me. Calling me every name you can think of, and I just see my mom standing there looking out the window, not even looking at me. Fear was everywhere in that room, and I had no choice but to stand in there with it.
While he was yelling from the bed, he reaches down to the floor to grab his pants and snatches his belt from them. And he did that typical thing when you’re about to get a whooping, and the belt is too long, so he wrapped it around his hand. But he didn’t wrap it like most people would by grabbing the buckle in his palm and then wrapping it. He started the wrap at the other end, leaving the buckle dangling. Next thing I know, he grabs my wrist, I’m being yanked onto the bed, and I get my ass beat for a solid minute or so with that belt and buckle. I’m screaming for my mom. She is still looking out the window, not looking at me. I’m crying for him to stop, and he’s just hitting me over and over again, saying things like “You keep knocking on that door”, or “You’re acting like a punk”, or “Stay in a child’s place.” During that beating, my mind went silent after a while, and the only thing I saw was my mother standing in the corner looking out the window. Not once did she come to my rescue, not once did she tell this man to stop. A man that has only been in your life for some weeks was beating your child, and your child had to face that alone with you there.
Once the entire situation was over, he’s still talking shit and yelling for me to go sit down. I leave and go back to the room with my siblings, and they are all just sitting there in shock because they heard what happened. They looked at my back, and it was covered in welts, and I just remember them being mad. They started opening and slamming the window closed out of anger, slamming the door, and putting lotion on my back with some ice. At that moment, the fear I felt was no longer fear. It was anger. And that anger grew because the protector I needed in that moment looked out a window and let fear hurt me.
I’ve since found forgiveness for my mother for that situation. Looking back on that moment as an adult that has gone through therapy, I can see many things about it but I can also see that I feared what was about to happen in that moment because I didn’t know what was coming. But once I went through it, the fear I had made sense. But there was no one to teach me how to handle that fear or how to handle that fear turning into anger. And the situation is too complex for this posting to tell you how I found that forgiveness.
But now I am here to tell you, fear is just you not having enough information based on what you’ve encountered. You see things on the internet that call up fear in your heart; go look up that information. 10 times out of 10, the information you saw that caused fear was only a portion of the story. The portion that is meant to cause fear. Charles was meant to cause fear for me. When people introduce fear into your life, that is their act of controlling you. Fear makes people act impulsively, and you don’t have to do that. So I ask the next time someone tries to make you feel fear or if you read something that makes you feel fear, remember that you get to tell that fear how to exist within you. You either educate it and tell it to shut up, or you let it control you. I personally don’t want the introduced fear to scare you. So, let’s call that fear Charles and beat its ass together. It has no place here. It’s just a big nothing that can hurt you, but once you reclaim your power and kick fear out, you will be okay.
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