Love and Fear

-->

Love and fear have always been very closely intertwined in my mind, at least for as far back as I can remember.

I always loved my father beyond reason, but from the year I was twelve on, I carried with me a deep and abiding fear that he would die and leave me behind. So I loved, and I worried, always the two hand in hand, and in the end, of course, he did die.

I love my mother too, and it has always been my fear that if I do not share the dreams and goals she has wanted for me, that her love might be in some way conditional. It seems that this may have been true as well, although I don't proclaim to know my mother's true feelings. She wanted me to go to college and be a doctor, to delay having a family, to have an only child like I was, to marry a smart man with a big career and a bigger paycheck. I tried college, but as a writing major, and I flunked out. I got pregnant at the age of eighteen, just a few short weeks after my high school graduation. My daughter's father was older than me by almost a decade, he drove truck, earned little more than minimum wage, and was going nowhere fast. In short, she hated him, disapproved of my choices, and has never stopped letting me know about the ways and reasons she feels that I have failed. She cries on the phone to her friends about my lost potential and how many years she spent with me when I was young trying to teach me the right things, and how I have always had a mind of my own, no regard for her feelings. Another fear realized.

When I was twenty-three I married that boy my mother hated. I thought I loved him then. We had a three year old daughter together and we both loved her. We lived together and managed to get through the days. But again there was fear.  I was afraid he was still in love with my step-son's mother (he was.) I was afraid he was the kind of man who would hurt my feelings often and horribly and that he would take for granted how desperate I was to have a family and be proud of my part in it. (he did and he did. ) I don't mean to imply that he was a horrible man. We were horrible for each other though, and my fear of that was present right from the very beginning. The first time we fought and he called me a whore in front of our sons I knew that I was so right to have been afraid.

I love my half siblings from my father's first marriage. They are all more than a decade older than me, but I spent years looking up to them, chasing their affections and enjoying their company. I have always been afraid, though, that without ,my father there to link us, they would move on and forget about their youngest sister. And so they did, although they didn't wait for Dad's passing. When he got sick in 2002 I found myself pregnant with my third child and alone with my mother trying to provide round the clock care for my(very nearly) dying father while the five of them clipping along in their everyday lives, enjoying their grown children and sleeping full nights without our father's weakened voice to waken them. I watched him waste away alone for the most part. And since he's been gone they have left me farther behind than I had ever dreamed possible. They have all but disappeared from my life. It makes me sad, because they are the closest physical link I have to the father I loved so much and lost.

I have four children of my own now. My step-son and my own three little monkeys. I love them in a way I hadn't thought possible before becoming a mother so many years ago. It's the kind of love that dwarfs every other feeling I have ever had. And the fear that goes with it is almost insurmountable. I am afraid that I will make a mistake, hundreds of mistakes, really. I don't want to pressure them too much like my mother pressured me. I want to show them unconditional love and acceptance. I want to live for as long as they need me. I don't ever want to find that any of my children think that love and fear must be synonymous. Everyday I am afraid that they are the most important job I will ever have, and I am afraid that I will fail. Some days I do fail , but either way, the fear never leaves me.

All of a sudden, things are different. If you've been with me up until now, you know that I am in love again, or perhaps still is a better word to use. I still love B as much as I did twenty years ago when I was only thirteen years old, except I love him more. And every day I love him even more. I don't believe that I have ever stopped loving him. In all those years we spent apart, there was never an important moment in my life that he didn't grace my thoughts. The day I married my ex, it was B's face I saw every time I closed my eyes.  On the days I gave birth to my children, I always stopped at least once to consider what those moments would have been like with B at my side instead. I have loved him above and beyond as a part of every moment of every day we have spent, together or apart. I would like to say that this one overriding love of my life has never held within it a moment of fear; but if I did I would be lying. There are days that I am still very much afraid, but it is no longer every day. I am sometimes afraid that he will look at my complicated chaotic life and decide that it's not worth it, that these kids are too hard to deal with or that I am too riddled with anxiety for him to rely on. I am afraid that he will someday decide to start drinking again, or that I might slip back into my old habits of self destruction. But with B, all that fear has a different quality to it. It no longer consumes me as it once did. Most moments of most days I am at ease in a way that I hadn't ever thought possible. I am no longer ever afraid of another person hurting me. I feel his love and protection and concern every second these days. The fears are fading away, and I have no reason not to think that someday soon I will wake up and feel no fear, just the comfort that is fast becoming my new norm. I hope with all f my heart that he can help me teach this new feeling to my kids. The glimpses I've gotten of love without fear have really been something to behold.