Fear

Last night just as I was about to sleep, I wandered onto bbc.co.uk and found myself transfixed to the live news stream about the Norwegian bombings and gun attacks. I slept late, unable to quite bear with the scenes of destruction being broadcast right to my wee laptop (the wonder of modern technology indeed) and yet unable to quite ignore it, despite the fact that I could do nothing. This morning I woke up to the news that of the gun attack, 80+ people had died. This was quite a change from the 4 quoted in the news before I went to sleep. He shot into the water even, eyewitnesses said, to kill those attempting to swim to safety.

I spent the morning in a vague haze of sadness. Sadness at the fact that the world seemed so violent and harsh, and how easily one person could destroy the lives of so many families. Sadness that no one really, could do anything about it. Sad too, for myself, because it made me feel that little bit more scared of the world.

The last time I really remember feeling quite like this was the night of my graduate prom in 2008. It was 28 November 2008, and I had spent an entire night being blinded by flashes in a darkened ballroom. My feet hurt from my really high heels, exacerbated by the fact that my stockinged feet slid in the shoes. My eyes were dying from the dry contact lenses, and my makeup was starting to smudge into the warm humid air of the night. I had gone with the !nk crowd to the old Color Bar in HV. Somehow I remember drifting into a blue funk at random times, feeling immensely sad at the thought of the Mumbai bombings, which my friends around me chattered. I'd walk away, and off into random corners to just think about how terrible the world was, and how sad everything was. Ultimately pointless, but I did it anyway.

Today HM came over for a bit, and we started talking about graduate school. The thought about how everything was so unknown, and how I didn't want my proverbial wings to be clipped, made me scared. She told me she was scared too, but it was one of those things where two scared people together only magnifies the problem. She had to leave soon away, she was going to have dinner at her grandmother's.

After dinner I asked my mother why she decided to have children. She couldn't really give me an answer. I asked my maid, Felice. She couldn't give me an answer either. Blargh, I thought, about the future. It seems so unknown, and therefore so scary. Yet it's typically get an education, get married, have kids. It seems so simple and straight-forward, yet why do I feel so scared at how uncertain everything is? (At the same time I feel slightly resentful at how 'certain' it ought to be, but that's something for another time.) It seems I am always scared, and hence often sad.

And the's when I thought most about what I want to achieve from this year for myself: I want to live a life as best as I can free from fear. Fear of overcooking food, fear of not being able to get good enough grades, fear of being emotionally hurt by yet another person. I'm tired of being afraid, and I want to break free from what is arguably a pointless emotion.