Kali J Desautels

I don’t know how to not be scared. I don’t know how to keep my fears in a box and pretend they aren’t there. Don’t get me wrong – I can wrestle them into the box, and I can push the box away from myself, but, like the mythic Pandora, I am unable to stop myself from opening the box again, and “with [my] hands and scatter[ing] all these and [my] thought cause[s] sorrow and mischief…”(Works and Days ~ Hesiop)

I have this bipolar desire to both hide from things that scare me, and to pull my fears out, and lay them on an examining table with a microscope. I don’t want to see them, I don’t want to think about them, I don’t want them near me; and yet… and yet I am afraid that if I don’t peer into the box and poke at them, they will spill out of the box from some secret crack that I didn’t know to stopper. I insistently tell myself that my fears will not rule my life, that I am in charge of my emotions and reactions; I have nothing to fear. But then the crack shows up, I will notice it out of the corner of my eye, or imagine that I do, and I will rush to pull out all the “diseases… bringing mischief” (Cont’d Hesiop) to my soul. I scatter them on the table and feel the tightening of my chest, the fight or flight, the desire to escape, matches by my desire to climb under my favourite heavy, green blanket and to remain there forever.

What is it about fear? What is it about it’s power? How can I control my life when I am constantly pulled back to my fears? How does a looming deadline, exacerbated by a cancer setback, followed quickly at the heels by my son getting hurt physically while out with his friends, and my daughter feeling hurt emotionally suddenly feel like it is all too much to bear when our Employment Insurance comes to an end, and my Caregiver Leave does not get paid? How do I teach myself to handle the stressors, without giving into the malignancy of the fear? How do I remember that this is a season of life, and for better or for worse, it will pass? How do I find my centre, when the centre keeps moving?

“Only Hope remained there in an unbreakable home within under the rim of the great jar, and did not fly out at the door; for ere that, the lid of the jar stopped her, by the will of Aegis-holding Zeus who gathers the clouds.” (Cont’ Hesiop)

Does hope still live there, even when my fears are scattered around me like ashes? I think so. I think that hope is the only thing that stops my fears from winning and the only thing that gives me the strength to wrestle them back into the box. I think that the hope, or the belief, or the faith that things will get better.

“King Solomon once searched for a cure against depression. He assembled his wise men together. They meditated for a long time and gave him the following advice: Make yourself a ring and have thereon engraved the words ‘This too will pass.’ The King carried out the advice. He had the ring made and wore it constantly. Every time he felt sad and depressed, he looked at the ring, whereon his mood would change and he would feel cheerful”
-Israel Folklore Archive # 126 Origin of “This, too, shall pass”

So, like King Solomon, in the night, as my fears overtake me, I look to the dainty, delicate semicolon butterfly tattoo on the inside of my left wrist, and I remember that my fears are not new – they are different, and they are bigger, and they are volatile, but they are not new – and that I have survived before, and I will survive again. I look at the elaborate tattoo on my right hip bone and see the reasons that I must keep hope. The reasons why my fear must be wrestled back into the box again, and again; and I hope against hope that I will learn to leave the box well enough alone. That I will learn to handle my fears before they find the crack through which they might seep, and that, I will learn to be more hopeful and less fearful.