Fear, I know your name

I figured something out last week. Not the answer to a nagging question nor a chunk of memory recovered; no, it was much more subtle than that. I figured out the answer to a question that I wasn't asking yet, that I didn't even know to ask.

This having-my-own-voice thing is great on paper, but in reality I have struggled with it all my life. Even in the last two+ years, when I have grasped with my own two hands the birthright of being myself, uniquely beautiful and distinct from the rest of the world, I have been mortified to find myself silencing my own voice for whoknowswhatreason. Well, now I know.

I am afraid.

I am afraid of being rejected.

I am afraid that, in having my own voice and seeing things differently, I will be loved less.


I have often felt like disagreements in my family have come hand in hand with disapproval. When I decided to go into music instead medicine, when I dated a rakish Jewish boy instead of the respectable engineer from Taiwan, when I asked my husband of ten years to move out: each and every time I had to count the cost, and the cost has been high. As I write this, I grieve my current estrangement from my parents, the awkwardness eased only by the tumult that three beloved grandchildren can bring. I can say that it's their problem, that this is their Old World way of showing that they love me, that of course I need to do what I think is best and that they'll come around, but the truth is that I have cowered and am in danger of cowering in the shadow of a palpable if not obvious fear of rejection.

I don't think I would have realized this had it not been for the profound, unbridgeable gap that lies between their point of view and mine on the issue of my marriage. Had it been just a little thing I might have easily swayed myself to their way of thinking as I have many times before, unaware of the internal compromise of choosing acceptance over independence. But this is no little thing.

So I'm choosing to face this fear, now, for the sake of myself.

Somehow I was able to uncover this in therapy last week, to hear it and not be overwhelmed by it, to sit with it and marvel at how it fits like a kidskin glove. It feels so vulnerable to be laid open, my deepest fears exposed and known. But if knowing is half the battle, then I'm going to win this one.

photo credit: Philippe Ramakers via stock.xchng