Fear is a Photograph

Fear.

F. E. A. R.

Face Everything And Rise.

Forget Everything and Run.

A lot of my life has revolved around those four simple letters. From an early age, fear and I were well acquainted. I have had nightmares and night terrors throughout my life (still do from time to time), and I constantly struggle with a fear of failure, a fear of change. I could write a book (haha! Shameless plug to read my book Nemesis: The Diary of Jared Donovan. It's on Amazon).

This is not to say I have allowed those four letters to control me completely; I am lucky enough to have had parents who could both comfort me on the bad moments and empower me to find ways to take control of my fears. I am married to an incredibly strong woman who can quiet my proverbial hurricane as needed and creates a stable, solid foundation to build my life around. My siblings are phenomenal, I have great friends, and I am stubborn enough to fight my way through most hardships. Along my journey, I have found the best weapon I have against fear is what I do to overcome them. Exercise, writing, music...whatever it takes.

And yet, the last year has been imbued with a frightening new pulse of fear. Fear of the unknown, fear of failure, fear of a lack of control...oh yeah, and that whole Corona Virus thing...we'll get to that.

I lost a job I considered a life calling last summer, due to the massage school closing. A place I had carved out a niche for over ten years, gone in a matter of weeks. I spiraled into a dark place, as dark as I can remember since high school (story for another day). It continued day to day, month to month, seemingly hollowing out my very soul. I have had no idea what to do with this next chapter of my life, and I am still figuring it out. But the fear of life without teaching has been dissipating. Slowly, but it is dissipating.

Later last year, I was given the most potent dose of fear yet. My 18 month (now 2 years) old son had a seizure in the middle of the night. At 4:30 A.M, I awoke to an odd sound coming through our baby monitor. My stomach dropped, and my wife and I closed the distance to our children's room in record time. After a few moments, we took him to the emergency room.

He came to on the way to the hospital, and eventually fully came out of it. After an exhausting and agonizing few hours, we were discharged with a new pathological term, and, a new name for fear: Febrile Seizure (basically, a seizure caused by a spike in a fever). Febrile seizures are somewhat common, and the seizure itself isn't overly worrisome unless it's longer than 10 minutes (his was about 6 minutes of hell). Up until about the age of 5, we will have to watch him closely if he gets a fever.

The reason I mention this experience is simply for context. My son is doing well.

Since that night, I have been working on this post. Up until recently, I haven't had the ability to properly frame it. This is my best shot.

Even though it's been almost 6 months, I can still remember how he looked, how he smelled, which pajamas he was wearing...I remember the exact sounds he was making. I have never been so scared in my entire life. I can't remember what I had for breakfast today or where I leave my damn phone on the daily, but I can tell you every detail about that night.

Fear is a photograph. Some of the edges blur in time, but the subject matter is captured eternally. I can remember the panic. I can remember the pain on my wife's face as she tried to be strong in those moments. I remember my stomach tying in knots as the doctors checked on my little boy. I remember the 3 times I almost vomited from the suffocating feeling of waiting for his temperature to drop. I remember how scared I was to go to sleep that night, afraid he'd have another one.

Fear is a photograph. Every time I think about that night, it's like looking at a Polaroid. It is a visceral, sobering feeling. But that fear I felt frames the reality of what happened that night. It is the fear that makes me check on my son and daughter as they sleep, to check the temperature anytime I think they might feel warm, to focus on keeping them well.

Over time, I check the monitor less, worry less...but the memory of that night will forever be frozen in time in my memory.

Fear is a photograph. Don't believe me? Have you been to Walmart or Costco lately? How many of you have seen pictures of empty shelves on social media? How many of us drove out to our local stores only to find things we didn't think would be hard to find (i.e. toilet paper, hand sanitizer).

 Anyone wake up to an earthquake and panic-call or text pretty much everyone you know? Check up on the food storage you have/wish you had?

I am not one to judge what people do when they are afraid. Like I said, I do some fairly obsessive things too. The fight-or-flight kicks in, and people go full Walking Dead mode. It turns into survival. People get primal when that adrenaline kicks in. I get it. I wish there was more TP around, but I get it.

The point is, all of us are afraid. Whether you think this is the end of the world, Mother Nature unleashing her wrath, or simply just a trainwreck of a year so far, fear is floating around like a thundercloud and man, it is pouring right now.

A quarantine/social distance is not great for anyone in the bodywork or service field, let alone for us small business owners. Numerous dear friends have lost their jobs at spas, clinics, and offices across the state. The fear of the unknown is absolutely suffocating for so many of us. Flattening the curve is terrifying when you know that if you don't work, you don't get paid. And yet, to slow down the spread of the virus, it is necessary.

Today, my wife and I made an incredibly painful decision to close up and not see clients for a few weeks (hopefully) to do our part. We are doing it to protect our family, our friends, our clients, and hopefully, to resolve this virus business as soon as possible. We will be ok, but it was one of the hardest things I've ever done.

I am not arrogant enough to think that I am immune to the virus or that I am young and strong enough to survive it; it's not about me. It's about me being the common denominator between the virus and everything I have built my life around. It's about the people I care about. It's about my photograph.

Look closer at your own personal photograph. What do you see? I see my family. I see my clients. I see my future, my kids' future. I see my parents. I see my nieces and nephews. I see my friends.

The things we focus on in our respective photographs are the most important things in the world. I am guilty at times of losing that perspective, of focusing too much on work or other trivial things. Of rolling my eyes when my daughter wants to show me her 13,000th drawing of a cheetah on a given day. Or preferring to turn on the tv or scroll social media rather than cherish the little things.

Fear makes us see what life would be like without what's in that photograph.

When all of this is over, we will all have a choice. We can go back to where we were before COVID-19, or we can see things a little more sharply, a little more clearly. Our grandkids will ask us about it with interest, like some of us did about the Great Depression, Woodstock, Pearl Harbor, or even 9/11.

One day, we will have to field the hard questions, and I intend to answer that I did everything I could to help. Shutting down for this time period is terrifying. I have more trepidation about it than I can convey here with mere words, but I intend to be able to look back at my photograph, fuzzier than it once was, and be able to give as much detail as I can about the reality of these scary times and what I did to contribute.   

In closing, even though we all hold our photographs close and will do anything to protect them, we all must realize that the fear will pass. But I guarantee we will all remember it. When the fear is gone, it's up to us what the lasting effect is. This fear is not going to last forever, but the lessons we learn from it very well could. 

In the meantime, embrace what you see in your personal polaroid. Call your loved ones. Hold your kids close. Cherish the little things. Share your toilet paper (if you have it to spare). Take care of the people in your lives in need. Be human. Do what you can. 

Be good to each other. See you on the other side of the quarantine.

sb