Are you fearful? Have you ever taken a closer look at your anxiety? What does your fear look like? Well, here you can see an image of mine. Scary and pretty confusing, huh?
It looks like a disturbing mask with its focus always at what is supposedly essential, paralyzing and covering everything up, what is supposed to be me. Doesn't it even look as if one hand of the fear wants to hide this peaceful sky with the coat while the other hand pats me on the shoulder encouraging me that it’s the right decision to hide what's on the inside? Saying: “Don’t go there. It’s safer to stay. It could hurt you.”
Our relationship is a bit complicated. If I’m being honest, most of the time I want it to eff off. Even if I've never wanted to meet my fear voluntarily, it asks me every day if we want to have a cup of tea together. The more I uninvite it, the more regularly it knocks on my door.
Lately I've been giving up more and more often. I was tired of the knocking background noises and we eventually started to spend time together. Even if it is often annoying, we are slowly starting to get to know each other a little better. During our tea sessions it’s telling me proudly: “Hey man, do you remember when you were a child, when I told you to be afraid of fire and not to touch it?” - Boring stories like that. But it also has its ways to invite me to have a closer look. Sometimes hanging around with my fear is so painful that it also makes me automatically reflect on my life. What if fear is just a symptom pointing at the cause? Telling you to take care of yourself. It can disturb the communication with yourself but with another point of view it could also be a guide.
Sometimes even something magical happens and the fear makes me pick up the pen to create works like this one. Is it true that if I get to know why the fear wants to stay with me, we can even become friends? Well… let’s not be hasty.
So thinking about the hand of the fear on the coat ... does it really want to hide something? Or is it about to uncover something? I think that depends on your own perspective.
