On Fearlessness

Hi from London

I’m in London, visiting my brother and his fiancee, and laying low. It’s the kind of trip where I spend most of my time alone with my thoughts, unless I’m wandering around a Boots pharmacy calling kids/husband/Mum because it has free wi-fi, and my phone is not compatible with 5G networks—if you are traveling internationally with an iPhone 11, I hope you like living in 1998 (I do!)—ANYWAY,

I woke up scared a couple of days ago, because my left arm kept tingling and falling asleep, and after an Accident they tell you to watch out for this, because it can mean permanent nerve damage. After googling chiropractors nearby, I learned I was using the wrong word, and booked Jerome the osteopath for a session on Wednesday morning. I was warned that osteopaths talk a lot, but I’m so glad Jerome did.

He said that he could physically manipulate the pieces of my body back to where they were meant to be, but that I’d have to sort out my brain. He told me that my arm wasn’t asleep, it was exhausted, because my brain keeps telling my shoulder muscles to clench, in anticipation of being hit again. And had I worked through my feelings? I sighed in frustration. Do I really have to keep processing this? I’m kind of tired of talking about it all. Jerome was patient—he’s obviously dealt with my kind before. He wasn’t talking about the swirl of mortality.

You have been on the receiving end of social violence, he said. I made a sound somewhere between a gasp and a groan. You’re allowed to say it’s unfair, you’re allowed to say “why me!” Two things I had definitely not said out loud, or even let myself consider, because I’m so grateful to be here still. If it makes you more comfortable to do so, you can write this down on a piece of paper and burn it. I spent the rest of the day thinking about what he said, and talking to my shoulder. I felt it clench up dozens of times, and I soothed it like I would a baby bird. You’re OK, I told it. We’re ok. We’re safe. Each time I felt it relax, like a magic trick.

But he also said another thing, and I realize it sounds like I’m making this up, because it seems too silly that a large French man should just show up on that particular day to prod me into character development. But this is sometimes how the world works. It’s not nerve damage, right? I asked him, sheepish, and he laughed, knowing I had spent too long on the internet. He pointed out that the internet will always tell us the absolute worst that can happen, but assuming the worst is like thinking life is a sexually transmitted infection that leads to death.

He was just regurgitating a quote that has been atrributed to everyone from Margaret Atwood to the Scottish psychiatrist R.D. Laing,—I’ve certainly seen it meme-ified—but it made me think about how much fear I carry around, and not just in my shoulders. I understand, now, why I prickle when people have called me “fearless,” which is worse even than “badass” or “boss lady.” I’m not fearless at all. I’m riddled with fear, for reasons explained in my book, and it’s the one constant of my life. I’m scared of everything, all the time. I’m scared about this presidency, I’m scared the sharp pain in my right arm is a frozen shoulder it will take me years to fix, if it ever gets fixed. I’m scared our house will burn down (again)—there are so many wires in it! I’m scared of societal collapse. I’m scared of financial collapse. I’m scared of war (again). I’m scared AI will take our jobs. I’m infinitely scared for my children—a list of fears I can’t even think about because I’ll fall into the abyss. I’m scared I will die every time I get into a car. I’m scared my work will suck, and that I will be revealed as an idiot. I’m scared a loved one will be murdered (again), and on top of that I won’t be reachable. I’m scared I will never leave Los Angeles, a city that has slowly driven me bananas. I’m scared I’m not spending enough time with my parents, and nobody’s getting younger. I’m scared of rats, and snakes, and bedbugs, and dark rooms, and the niggling thought that there might be tiny pieces of broken glass on the floor. I’m scared of streets with no spotlights. I’m terrified of everything, all the time.

What I am not, is incapacitated. Sometimes they freeze me in their grip, the fears. I sit in bed thinking oh no, they got me. I feel like a melting candle. But the second I can muster a scrap of sense, I go immediately to battle. I meditate, I walk, I sing, I do what I need to do, to keep them at bay. I’m not fearless, I’m stubborn. And if I’m doing all the things —- so many things, I know—I can soothe the baby bird who lives in my chest, and remind it that I’m safe, for now.

I woke up yesterday morning and my tingly arm felt fine. The presence of Jerome and his healing words this week have been ridiculous enough, I can’t get into the literary architecture of having had my accident five days before a calamitous election. Our poor country, and its hundreds of millions of victims of a social violence that’s just beginning. Everyone is scared and screaming, and everyone should be. It may seem counterintuitive that fear is not the scary part. We can’t make the fear evaporate. But we’ll have to figure out how to manage it.

xo