Dear Fear,

Why won’t you just leave me alone for once in my life? You constantly nag at me, always in the back of my mind. You force your way through all other partitions in my mind, becoming a swirling black hole at the center of everything. That’s one of the worst parts, too. You’re not some big fanged monster. You’re not an allegory like some of the fiends of old. You’re just a big, black, dark cloud. I can’t put even a mildly comforting face on you. You’re a cloud that fogs over everything. A cloud, standing tall and foreboding, like a storm cloud, except where it rains without end. A cloud that, no matter how hard I try, I can’t dissipate.

You’ve been there as long as I can remember, in one form or another. When I was a little kid, I would be afraid of monsters and the dark. I would lay in bed, listening to music, trying to get thoughts out of my head of something standing at the door. Usually it was this plant monster I saw on the cover of a Goosebumps story in one of my elementary classrooms. Funny story, later I saw the TV version of that book. It was horribly cheesy. The effects were cheap, and it was never scary. By then this particular fear was mostly gone, and I thought that seeing that video would cure me. But then you came back with a vengeance. You wanted to make up for lost time. I was no longer afraid of that monster, but the mere concept of someone, something being there that I would have to wait until my brother went to sleep in the next room over until I felt safe. I would sit there, reading and rereading Calvin and Hobbes comics, waiting and waiting. Light on, head bent over book, looking over my shoulder every comic or two. I would lie there in bed, for what seemed like hours, until I heard the telltale noises of a 13-year-old boy clunking his way up the steps. Then, I was safe. Then, I was comfortable in letting my guard down. Even now, having just passed my 16th birthday, I’ll have these moments where I still have to look over at the door to make sure no one’s there.

You affect me in many different ways, and you’re often irrational. One of the main ways in which you affect me is a way that you affect many others: you make me fear of my acceptance by others. You’re a lot weirder than that, though. You can’t stand to watch me act comfortable in the one place where I shouldn’t see you: among my friends. You leave me alone when it comes to strangers and crowds, letting me get away with not worrying about how I act around people I will never probably meet. But once I get to be amongst friends, you show up. Out of nowhere, you’ll get me wondering if they actually like me, if they actually enjoy my company, if their not just being polite and waiting for me to go away. Most of this happens in the band room before school starts. When I arrive, there might be one or two waiting there, but within the span of minutes, the room is flooded with people. Some will bang annoying repetitive tunes on the piano. Some will just stop by the locker to drop off an instrument, and then proceed with their day. Some, like me, will sit there and talk with their friends until the bell forces us to separate. I’ll be talking with people I talk with every morning, people who I’ve done nothing to wrong, and show no sign of wanting to get away from me. People who I talk with constantly, who I am simply friends with. But still, you have be there. You’re sitting among my friends, telling me that they don’t actually want to be with me. That they can’t wait to move on with their day and get away from boring old Nathan. I know I have no reason to think this. I know that they would be more obvious about it if they really wanted me to go away. I even realize that it’s pretty self-centered, thinking that they have me in their thoughts once they’re near me. But you do that to me. You make me think this way.

I just realized something. Writing this like these fears come in big events doesn’t do it justice. It doesn’t do justice to the moments where you just fly through my mind, bringing up a point and then disappearing just as quickly as you came. The moments that must happen nearly every hour. The times when I walk the halls and you make me think that I’ve forgotten something. Most of the times it’s just a feeling. I quickly check my bag, and then proceed with my day. Then there’ll be times when I have forgotten something. Something big. Thoughts rush through my head as I stand there, thinking about how I could get back a binder I left at home. Can I text a parent and have one of them bring it to me? If so, what will they think of me? Will they be disappointed in me? Will this be the final straw, when they realize that I don’t deserve all I get from them? It’s never happened before, but what if it could this time? All these thoughts occur in a second, and a thousand more the next, and a million more the next. I stand there, waiting, worrying, with you standing there right next to me.

See, there I go again! That’s not what I want, and that not what you want. You want me to recount how you’re always there, persistent, nagging, influencing every conversation I have. Perhaps you’re making me think of how I have a project due next week, and, due to my own procrastination, I haven’t started it. Maybe you’re telling me that failure will embarrass me, no matter how much I know that I can learn from my mistakes. Even as I write this now, you’re whispering in my ear, telling me that everyone will think of me differently if they read this. That my parents, walking around behind me, will make a huge fuss if they catch one word of this, and that’s not what I want, is it? You leave my mind like a desolate war zone. One not devoid of life, but in fact, one where life is still busting regularly, like nothing is happening. But the war looms over it. It’s behind every conversation each citizen has, an unspoken fact that, while no one admits is affecting their life, is taking the biggest toll that it can. This is how I picture my mind. A place that can and does function on a day-to-day basis, but has a dark cloud looming over it.

And yet, I know I shouldn’t throw you away, because you keep me in line. You keep me from doing utterly stupid things that would probably hurt me more than you do. You remind me that, even though society is not constantly thinking of me, it will remember a legacy that I leave behind, and that I can’t get away with whatever I want because of that. That’s really the most tragic part. That no matter how much you may torture me, no matter how much I want you to go away, I can never get rid of you. And I should never. Because the fear of bad things happening to me still isn’t as bad as those things actually happening.

So you may beat me up. You may leave me broken and devoid of energy. You may be present in every moment of my day, whittling me down until I must try to distract myself. And that’s all I can do, really, because the sad truth, the horrible, gut-wrenching truth is that I have to keep you around to keep myself from making you too real. You cause me constant pain, and all I can do about it is to try to keep you contained. And that will never happen.