Fear

The other night I had this horrible nightmare that I truly believe exposed my deepest fear: abandonment. It was torturous, the dream left me terrified and heartbroken. People, and in my case women in particular unfortunately, are just so wildly unpredictable that you never know when they’re going to suddenly pick up and leave you behind or shut you out of their life entirely without any explanation, even if you have a great friendship and countless memories. It’s something my mind will never grasp but I’ve seen it happen far too many times. It’s a part of humanity that I do not comprehend, cannot identify with, and don’t know what it would be like to do that to someone. I think of girls I dated or attempted to date. I think of my best friend’s ex-wife who randomly left not only him but all of us and without any clear reason whatsoever. I think about how to this day my heart still smolders with unforgiving bitterness when I think of her. If there had been an explanation then I think I could rest easy and I wouldn’t feel the way I do towards her. A sound explanation would be settling, but because there is not one in all of these cases, my tormented mind buries this one fear deep inside a dark, shadowy and hellish place; one that just so happened to rear its ugly face last night in my dream where I begged the person in it for answers but she did not give me one, as if she had turned into something that was no longer human; as if an internal switch had gone off making her into something else, turning off her humanity. It was unsettling, disgusting and weird, and yet it’s not something I haven’t witnessed in the physical realm. It terrifies me and I do not understand it.