A cat had crawled under the bed,
I entered the dark room, unaware and carefree,
The frightened cat, with its green eyes wide open, crawled out from under the bed and scared me to death.
In my childish mind, the room turned into hell, and the smell of the devil filled the air.
The fear of the cat’s green eyes transformed into a fear of its fur. The fear of the cat’s fur extended to the fur of a rabbit, and even generalized to the fur of a woman’s coat on a bus. And eventually, every time I am anxious, cats visit me in my dreams, drenching me in cold sweat.
And just like that…
Father comes home in the evenings,
The house fills with the smell of hell.
Every word of his is dark and foul.
The fear of evening turned into the fear of day, and the fear of day into the fear of life.
As someone who wanted to survive, I couldn’t constantly feel the ever-present fear of life. I shoved it into a closet until the last moment, so it wouldn’t hinder me from making plans and achieving success. When I finally reached the peak of my plan and managed to survive, only then did I feel the fear. It suddenly threw me into bed, cutting off the source of life and even making me think about death.
After a year of battling depression and post-traumatic stress disorder, I sit here, subdued, and think:
Now that everything is settled, what am I still afraid of?
Ah, poor thing, now you feel the fear that has evolved from being an emotion into a stable condition, and without it, the day doesn’t even dawn. It has grown roots during all these years of hiding, and its tendrils have even reached my breathing. This fear kills everything: interests, happiness, pleasure, hope for the future, joy….
The days passed in morning prayers: “This is me, this is my life!” That’s how I tried to defeat the constant derealization and consciously perceive the moments of my own life.
But do you know how I should have really started my mornings?
“Father is not here, I am free.”
The monster has been in the grave for four years, but for 30 years, he has lived in my psyche. Today is the first day I look around and see that my father exists neither inside nor outside. I am happy, I am filled with joy, life gives me hope, it becomes colorful and musical.
How did I manage it?
During a year of deep depression, I dug up this and that. I found a cause for everything. The remaining anxiety was driving me crazy. During one of the strong dissociative episodes, I realized what was behind all of it. At first, I thought my parents had frightened me with life like the boogeyman, didn’t teach me how to cope with difficulties, instilled in me a fear of the future and pessimism, but…
It turns out that behind all these fears was one specific fear. It turns out it was the fear of one specific “cat,” which had become so generalized that no boundaries could be found.
It is the fear of one specific person, transformed into a fear of the world. The fear of one specific person, his veined strong arm, the green hateful eyes glowing from his unshaven face, the sound of his footsteps entering the house, his deep voice, and the sound of objects he threw against the wall… It was only the fear of one man, but I was searching for the fear in the world.
So that’s how it is!
From today, my morning begins with this prayer:
“Father is not here, and I am free!”
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