PopcornJackTerry

I said it before, I’ll say it again. I don’t fully understand the fear of clowns. Yes, I have read It and seen the miniseries several times, and I will admit to having seen a few clowns in my day that made me wonder if there was somebody in the make-up trailer that said “No, you don’t look scary at all. Now go out there and make those kids laugh!” but none of that has ever changed my opinion of clowns as being emissaries of mirth and laughter. I even used to have this great poster of a clown with a huge smile on his face and the word “Fun” written in big letters across the bottom. I finally took it off the wall when I realized what a mood killer it could be. My best guess at explaining this clown equals scary phenomenon is maybe those who find clowns scary had their first clown experience with one of the aforementioned “You’re going out made up like that??” clowns and I was lucky enough to not, and the fear was established early enough in childhood so that it isn’t questioned but merely accepted.

The fear that I did share with most other kids was the fear of the dark and the subset fear of what was under my bed and in my closet. My basement had four lights in it, one in each quadrant, and only one switch was upstairs,so if you wanted to go to any other part you had to walk through the darkness to turn on the light. That didn’t scare me half as much as when it was time to leave, because then the dark was behind me, and that’s where scary things live. When I went to bed my closet had to be examined for any monsters and then the doors had to be firmly closed so just in case some monsters showed up in the darkness they wouldn’t be able to get me. Because, you know, monsters don’t know how to slide a closet door.

The monsters under my bed were harder to control, because there was no door. In my mind they looked a bit like lobsters, which might explain why I don’t eat lobster to this day. I do remember at one point in my childhood having a reasonably deep (for my age) conversation with myself. I reasoned that if there were monsters under my bed, and I didn’t personally know them and they hadn’t actually ever hurt me, isn’t it possible that they were good monsters and not bad ones? (I had these thoughts about 30 years before the movie “Monsters, Inc.” came out, so Billy Crystal and John Goodman, you owe me royalties.) I worked with this thought for a while and although I never got the chance to fully embrace them as being good-partially because my next bed had drawers built in under the bed frame so there was no place for monsters to live, good, bad, or indifferent-it gave me a small sense of control over at least part of my life.

The fear of the dark is an easy one to explain: it is a fear of the unknown. Understanding that opens up the rational behind many of the other fears that hold us back. You would think that falling in love and building a relationship with someone would be one of the greatest events in a person’s life, and it usually is, but so many people also talk about getting cold feet, questioning their decision, being afraid. It’s because it represents the unknown. It doesn’t matter how many other people tell you stories about their own relationships. That only intellectualizes it for you; you need to feel it viscerally to fully embrace the realm of possibilities. It is the same thing for starting a dream job, going off to the college of our choice, you name it. It is the unknown that frightens us.

A friend of mine said recently that he doesn’t fear failing but that he fears being a failure. It’s a powerful statement, more so than it just might seem on the surface, because to me the only difference between failing and being a failure is refusing to get back up. Failing is easy. We all do it on a weekly if not daily basis. Granted the majority of these failures are beyond small: spilling our coffee, taking a wrong turn, stubbing our toe, events that we don’t even think of as failing because if we did we’d drive ourselves insane. We think of failing on bigger level issues: screwing up at work, forgetting our anniversary, having a car accident. These things happen, we beat up on ourselves and, hopefully, we find a way to move on. The bigger we think the failing is, the harder we might beat and the longer we might take to move, but if do move forward and learn from what we’ve done, then it is simply a failing. We only become a failure when we give up completely.

I still have moments, sometimes almost every day, when I look around at my life and wonder what the purpose of struggling forward is, when I just think “fuck it.” Spend a minute with me inside the pity party that comes every so often: I’ll be 43 next month. I live in my brother’s attic. In the last 18 months my temper got me fired from one job and my drinking and behavior cost me two more, not to mention at least a half dozen friendships. My average weekly pay hovers around $125, I tried getting a full-time job only to realize that I wasn’t nearly ready for that, and the job that I’ve been doing for the last 19 years probably isn’t the best thing in the world for me either. Worst of all, I have all of this time to at least work on my writing, but instead I play solitaire, listen to music and procrastinate. Sometimes I look at all of that, and wrapping my mind around “one day at a time” just doesn’t happen. I’m supposed to come back from this?

I used the clowns earlier to introduce a point that I think happens on a much wider scale. A lot of who we are comes to us passively as children. We are still learning who we are in the first dozen or so years of our lives, so we take what the world gives us as the elements of our personality. I know that I had plenty of successes as a child, but I also know that one of my earliest memories is being in an out-patient setting for kids with emotional problems. I was noticed for a lot of the right reasons but what stands out more is remembering all of the wrong reasons I made an impression. To put it concisely, I failed at fitting in, and as much as my family and the friends I did have tried, there weren’t a whole lot of options in my town back then. So I spent the majority of my life trying to change that, in both good and bad ways, but what I never changed was letting go of that feeling of being a failure. When I had (and have) successes, I can’t fully believe them because I don’t think I’m entitled to them. If you don’t believe me, ask any of my ex-girlfriends. I can’t think of the last relationship that I didn’t sabotage, and yet I keep running into each new one I find in the hopes that it will make me complete and feel whole.

For the record, none of this is a cry for sympathy or a plea for help. I’ve tried to be nothing but honest when I write these blogs, and this is just a part of that honesty. Believe me when I say that in very many ways I’m in better shape and happier than I’ve been in years. I’m soon to be 43, and with that aging has come a more serene look at the world and a sense of peace with the aging process. By confronting my anger and alcohol issues I am getting better help than I have in a long time, help that I’ve needed for a long time but was too scared and pompous to fully embrace. Living in my brother’s house means I get to spend time with my nephews, watch them grow and enjoy their presence in my life. It allows me to get to know my sister in law a lot better and even connect more with my brother than I probably ever have. Yeah, I’d certainly like to be making more money, but part of the joy of not having it means not being able to spend it, so instead of distracting myself and splitting my focus, I’m reading at an amazing rate and giving myself time to focus on myself and take the steps I need to. 19 years is a long time to spend in one career, and although i will always take a lot of that experience with me, now I have to time to step back and see what new possibilities are out there. As for the writing I know it will come, but for that to happen I have to face my greatest fear. In a million years I never thought this would be the thing I was most afraid of, but it is. It frightens me more than lobsters, it frightens me more than the dark, and it even frightens me much more than failure.

It’s my fear of success.

Today’s sound track: I actually do have a fear of falling. It’s not heights that frighten me but the element of no support. Empire State Building? No problem, there’s a fence and railing. Six feet up on a ladder, though, and my legs start to shake. That being said, click here for the song.