17

Up until now I had been drunk on the promise of adventure.. l'aventure... of the unknown. But as I watch the dust settle, I cannot shake the feeling that the final flake to fall will cause an earthquake in my heart. A bitter war is occurring in the center of my torso now between reason, anxiety and foolish hope, three camps fighting the other to conquer both mind and matter. I know what it is that I ought to do. I ought to let go of inhibition, of paranoia, of the debilitating fear and live life as it comes. This fear is not synonymous with the mounting anticipatory adrenaline rush one gets on a roller coaster's first climb... this fear is deep and instinctive... a protective mechanism ... the shot of hesitation you receive as you stand on the threshold of a dark tunnel that has no end in sight.

I sit here consumed with anxiety and insecurity trying to psychoanalyze myself out of an emotional stupor. Can one really be blamed for wanting to medicate one's emotions into submission? To want to amputate one's heart so that all that remains are the phantom pains of emotion? Dostoevsky would tell me to relish in this fear. To suffer means I feel, it means I am human. But with each new wave, I remember the days in which I felt like a shade walking along the banks of the Styx... forever anticipating something but walking without purpose, without feeling and without any sense of outside awareness. There is a comfort in that quality of being numb... as is the state of knowing. Everything is so polarized at the moment. I feel as though I am either reading too much into things or not, accepting too little or too much, building things up or not at all, playing make believe or being hyper-cynical. I cannot find a balance and I don't know how. I want control simply because I foolishly believe it will prevent my heart from being broken; the notion that knowing the future... knowing if, when or how things will end ... might somehow protect me. But knowing if things will end seems too optimistic... knowing when is too pessimistic... and knowing how is masochistic.

This fear is like an ancient Fury that slipped into my soul with serpentine artifice to haunt me with nightmares of my past. She distorts the face of my current interest into the ones of my past - connecting and confusing their present character and qualities with those from ancient history long since repressed. "His eyes have the same look in them just like that one used to have but what can it mean?" They are all distorted visions, misappropriated and misinterpreted so that I can give up while I'm ahead and cut myself off from being human. We call it reason, to reason with ourselves. But is it truly reasoning that takes over the silliness of youthful romance when it becomes something more and when we suddenly become concerned what our best friends, our parents, our minor acquaintances will think? Is it reasoning when we give up simply because it cannot work out? But are these butterflies simply a case of indigestion caused by stress and anxiety?

I know what I ought to do: Throw caution to the wind; ignore what everyone might think; come what may; let go... all this cliché phraseology that sounds like bravery and courage and foolishness and stupidity all at once. But I cannot help but pause and ponder what is at stake. Do I have nothing or everything left to lose? Soon, all this will seem laughably ridiculous but I cannot shake this chill that has crept into my veins.