the monster under the bed…

now this I’m afraid of…

I’m pretty sure we all have “something” we are afraid of…I’m not afraid of most of the things I used to be scared of when I was younger, but I still have fears. I think after going through so many difficult things in my life and as I age, the things I once thought were scary… no longer scare me. Also, I just decided one day to stop living in fear. However that being said, I still have a few things that I’m afraid of.

Ok, let me just get this out of the way… I’ll admit it…I’m still afraid of the “monster under the bed”…I do not EVER allow a leg or arm hang over the edge and never ever look under there in the dark. I always keep a sheet or something(no mater how hot it is) over me while sleeping..just in case the monster decides to come out. I don’t care who you are or what you think of me, this is scary.

I am a little afraid of aging…not that getting older scares me but what comes with it. I want to live a good long life and my grandson just told me he hoped I live into my 90’s..I just don’t want to not be able to do the things I love to do. I have seen my mother decline in health and not be able to get out of bed for 4 years before she actually passed. I don’t want that. I don’t want my kids to have to see me that way. I want to only age to the point I can still enjoy life…I know I have no control over that for the most part but I do try to take care of myself and stay healthy.

Along with aging comes the fact that as we age we lose people we love. I keep losing people. I’m afraid of losing more. I am constantly aware of this. When I was little and lost people I never really experienced the loss like I do now. I remember my mother talking about this as she lost her friends and family but it didn’t affect me so I did not really understand her feelings about this. I value life and my friends and family members so much that each loss is so profound and deeply felt. And I lose a little part of me every time I lose someone.

“Always do what you are afraid to do.” ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson

I’m afraid of never being in love again. I think about this sometimes…will I never know  that feeling again. I’m 68 and at this point the chance for this to happen is slim to none.  I know I have the love of family and friends and believe me when I say how much I appreciate all of that love. I have been lucky to have had several loves in my lifetime and loved each one of them dearly and deeply. If I never experience that kind of love again, I guess what I had will have to have been enough. But I would like to feel that wonderful feeling of loving and being loved one more time.

One thing that really scares me is that I will leave this earth without really having done everything I wanted to do or accomplish. I’m afraid of dying without really having lived. Am I doing the things I want to do? Am I giving back? Have I made a difference? These things are important to me and I have been fixated on them lately. I want my days on this earth to mean something. I don’t want to just exist. I want to make a difference, I want to have mattered.

I really don’t want to get into politics or the state of our country and world, however I do worry about the future for our children and their children. But then I think back to when I was a very small child and the adults would all be in the living room talking…and I being the nosey kid I was at the time, would be around the corner listening to to their conversations about how worried they were for the world and what they feared was going to happen. Terrible things were going to happen. I was scared and had nightmares about the things they talked about. This was over 60 years ago and the conversation has stayed with me all my life. But the bad things didn’t happen then and I don’t think they will now. There are always scary times in each lifetime but somehow someway we persevere. We are tough, we survive and get through the difficult times somehow. We are brave! We are not afraid!!!

Oh and I almost forgot…I’m afraid of spiders.  I always have been. My Dad used to have to come up in my bedroom and kill them before I could go to sleep when I was little…and actually when I was a teenager too. I’m still afraid of them. I’m afraid of having one crawl in my ear at night while I sleep. But here’s a thought…maybe, just maybe the monster under the bed will eat all the spiders so I don’t have to be afraid anymore. So see that monster is good for something. Its nice to know you really can find something good in every bad situation..

What are you afraid of?

“You gain strength, courage, and confidence by every experience in which you really stop to look fear in the face. You must do the thing which you think you cannot do.” ~ Eleanor Roosevelt