Are there any other readers out there who are as big a scaredy-cat as I am lately? The reader I used to be was nearly as intrepid as the characters I loved to read. My heart soared with theirs as I joined them on their wild adventures, and I often found myself skipping important exposition and having to go back to it because I was so much more interested in the dialogue. I bounded ahead fearlessly with the faith of a child that everything would work out, or else it wasn’t the end. I didn’t question whether the spillover from the book to my real life would have an impact, because I had the sense to know that it wouldn’t. Or perhaps I was already so jaded I didn’t think what I read could shape me in the quiet, irrepressible way that books do. I was a child who did not settle for anything less than every detail I could ring and re-ring from a book, and I didn’t care about such unimportant things as chores when there were characters who needed my eyes and my imagination in order to live.
But now…I’m scared to read new things in exciting genres. When the characters are in danger and I’m not assured of a good outcome in this book because it’s the first in a series of books even bigger than the one in my hand, I find myself picking up the page by the edge with my fingertips and gingerly passing it over to the other side. I used to sweep my fingers underneath the whole page, feeling all the way to the binding sometimes, and flipping it carelessly over, because what did I need with that page when I was concerned with what might happen on the next one? Not anymore. Now I am the kind of reader who needs to put the book down and breathe a bit before I can resume. I have to run over and over in my head the question, “What if what happens next is worse than what’s already happened? They’ve been through so much. More than any human could conceivably survive and still have such courage. How are they able to move forward after all that’s happened?”
Perhaps I’m less brave now because I’m older, because I have things in my life that I care to lose. That’s awfully kind of me to say, because perhaps the truth is also that I’m simply not made of the same stuff as the characters I love. I’m not Harry Potter, with no parents and a terrible family that he was only too glad to leave behind. Though, there were many moments I would have happily done so back when I was Harry’s age. Now that I’m older, I’ve made my own family, much like Harry did, out of people who may not be my blood, but who have very large pieces of my heart. But I lack something Harry, Feyre, Thursday Next, Alyssa Gardner and so many others faced: a clear danger to themselves and their loved ones. No one is threatening me or my family if I don’t pursue my Destiny, which is clear, even if I don’t want to admit sometimes that such a thing as Destiny could be real. Now isn’t that nice and easy? Deny such a thing as Destiny because it’s inconvenient, messy, troublesome?
I’m a coward. I know it. If faced with losing someone important to me, someone I love dearly, I would more than likely fold. I want to tell myself that it would depend on the circumstances, that who was doing the threatening would make the difference. But I know when I look in the mirror and can’t quite make eye contact with myself what the truth really is. The truth that, Destiny or no, I am afraid to reach out and try. I am Robin Williams in the beginning of Hook, staring the rest of my life in the face and afraid to reach out and take it. Because I’ve already been through a lot, through harrowing things that I will one day be brave enough to put into words and maybe one day further on be brave enough to try to publish. Bu,t for right now, I’m a coward who’s afraid to turn the page and see what else might be waiting to break me down.
Lawyers like to say never approach a negotiation from a position of weakness, always a position of strength. You want to make yourself look like the biggest, baddest thing at that table so that whatever the other side thinks they can throw at you, you’re ready to bat it away like a flea. But when you find yourself approaching something as harmless as a storybook with trembling fingers, that feeling is impossible to manifest. I’ve read several books that would probably be cataloged as “self-help,” and maybe after you read what I’ve been through, after I’ve regained my courage and publish the stories, you might understand a bit more. But the thing that most of them have in common is that they ask you to ask yourself, “What is the worst thing that could happen if you pursued your dreams and failed?” Would you die? Would your family leave you? Their theory being that if you can face the worst things that could happen, no matter how unlikely they truly are, you can begin to find your courage again. That’s all very well and good, but I’m here to tell you that dying is not the worst thing that can happen to a person. Dying can, believe it or not, seem like a very great relief to a person if you catch them at the wrong, or right, moment.
I don’t like feeling like a coward. I don’t like feeling ashamed of my fear, but I don’t want to make excuses for it, either. I will simply say this: I. Am. Human. I am not a storybook character with inexhaustible fearlessness in the face of overwhelming odds. I am not the type of person who will come swinging into the action with blades flashing and guns blazing. I am a fearful, calculating pragmatist who prefers to see the waking life in front of her in the cold light of reality rather than be blindsided because I was living in a fantasy world of delusions where I imagine myself the hero. The problem with this philosophy when reality blindsides you anyway is that you begin to fear even the relative safety of the storybook. The escapism is no longer a relief when you can feel the fear of your real life creeping into the pages of the book in your hand, turning exhilaration into terror.
So here is my promise to you, dear reader. I will find a way to look my fear in the face. I can’t promise something like overcoming it. Not yet, anyway. (See what I meant about being a pragmatist? I’m hedging my bets in case it doesn’t work out.) But I will endeavor to at least face it. In the animal kingdom, a staring contest is not merely about seeing who blinks. It’s a test of dominance, and sometimes winning is life itself. If you find yourself in a staring contest with your dog, they’re trying to see if you look away first, because if you do, it means they are dominant over you. The stakes are quite a bit higher out in the wilderness, though. You get into a staring contest with a lion or a wolf, you damn well better win, and you better be able to back it up in case they decide to challenge you anyway. Facing fear is a lot like that. Last time, I blinked first. This time, I’m going for better. I may be a coward right now, but I’m aiming to change that. I probably won’t feature in any novel-worthy tale like Alyssa and Queen Red or Harry and Voldemort, but it’s my story, and that makes it plenty exiting.
My hope for you is that you are less cowardly than I have been lately. And if you have, don’t be as hard on yourself as I’ve been on myself. We’re all of us only human, and sometimes we have to get knocked down in order to learn how to get back up.
Thalia Huntley 