Fear Of...

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FEAR OF…

By TesubCalle

What one man fears most…






What do you fear most of all?

Most people will never experience their worst fear. They’ll obsess about it and go to great lengths to avoid situations that might bring them face-to-face with their worst fear.

Those that fear heights will never climb Everest, much less look down from a two-story window. Those that fear flying will take a bus or a train when they must travel. Those that are claustrophobic will ignore elevators and take the stairs. Those that fear drowning will never go near water. And so it goes. Fear cripples us; mentally, emotionally, spiritually.

I’ll tell you what I fear. I fear losing the ones I love.

And I am in that small percentage of people whose worst fears have come true.

Twice.


I met my first wife at a convention. We were both members of the American Psychology-Law Society. Dr. Maya Hobbs was seated to my right at one particular seminar I wasn’t terribly interested in attending, but decided to attend anyway. The stereotypical picture of a shrink is of an older white man, dressed in a tweed jacket with those suede patches on the elbows, sitting cross-legged in an easy chair, possibly wearing glasses. Maya was anything but. She was gorgeous.

Love at first sight is such a corny way to put it, but it’s the truth of our relationship.

We were married for three years and five months when a drunk driver broad-sided the taxi Maya was taking home from the offices of her private practice.

I wanted to die too, when I received the call informing me of the fatal accident. I felt as if my world was crashing down around me. Our dreams of having a family and growing old and wrinkly together were demolished, as demolished as that taxi Maya had been in.

I blamed myself, at first. Normally, we drove home together. That evening, however, I was dealing with one of my own particularly troubled patients. I knew our session would go way over the time I normally allotted, so I had called Maya to let her know taking a cab might be a better idea.

A better idea. Right. I cursed that ‘idea’ every morning and night that Maya was not with me.

She blamed me too, sometimes. In my dreams, that is. Her face, stern and accusing, would loom in front of me, and her disembodied voice would echo that she hated me for what I had told her to do. I would wake from such dreams to find my face wet with tears.

After I lost Maya, my insides were frozen. I felt nothing for anyone or anything. Dealing with my patients became a clinical exercise. I’m not sure how much help I was to those patients I saw over the next three years.


You’re probably wondering if I ever thought of therapy for myself dealing with Maya’s death. ‘Physician, heal thyself’ and all that. The answer is that I did think about it, but I refused to act upon it. What good would it do? I’d lost the one I loved. My worst fear had been realised, and life no longer held any meaning for me.

I suppose there was a certain level of conscious effort involved on my part to avoid waking up from my catatonic state. My reasoning was simple: If I entered into another relationship, I’d lose her, too. This I knew for certain. Besides, I was damaged goods. Who would want to take up with an emotionally detached widower?

Apparently, Dr. Claire Caldwell would. For the first time since Maya’s death, I’d met a woman who just might be the one to pull me out of the depths of depression I’d been dwelling in.

It was at another convention, of course; one I once again reluctantly attended. She was a presenter on the subject of research being done on the mental processes of presently incarcerated serial killers.

While the subject of serial killers is an interesting enough one on its own, Claire held the attention of the gathered AP-LS members like a vice. Mine included. Thunderous applause followed the conclusion of her seminar. When a number of us gathered afterwards to congratulate her, several in the party decided to press on to dinner. I found myself tagging along.

I don’t remember the details of that night; just that I spent most of it just looking at Claire. Listening to Claire. The woman knew how to speak. Maybe she’d taken oratory lessons; I don’t know. But every time she jumped into a conversation, everyone at our table stopped to pay attention.

By the end of the evening, all of us sipping espresso, I found myself asking Claire if she would have dinner with me at some future date, preferably sooner rather than later. To my utter amazement, she agreed.

Our relationship grew slowly but steadily from there. Claire made me believe in love again. She had the warmth and generosity of heart and spirit to thaw my ice-block heart. The fear of losing her had retreated so far to the recesses of my brain that I found the strength to ask her to marry me. Claire accepted my proposal.

A year into our marriage, though, I could feel those fears starting to creep back. Things had been going well for us. Too well. We were happy together. Ridiculously happy.

Our professional lives were going well, too. Claire had a successful practice and so did I. She was also a highly-paid public speaker, travelling the country giving talks on various mental health topics. But on each successive trip that took her away from home, I would get more and more frantic. I’d find myself glued to a 24-hour news service, expecting to see a report of a crashed airplane or derailed train. I began to have nightmares about losing her.

Of course, Claire noticed my change in behaviour, clever woman. She was a psychologist, after all. So, I had no choice but to tell her everything. She knew that I’d been married before and that Maya had died in that car accident. But I’d never told her what I feared the most.

“I fear losing you,” I said to her, feeling myself go numb with the thought that it could happen again. That I was almost certain it would happen again.

“Everybody dies,” Claire told me in her most sensible tone. “That is a fact of life. We can’t control when or where or how. But we’re here now. Let’s make the most of it while it lasts. That way we’ll have no regrets when it’s our time to check out of this life.”

Intellectually, I knew what she was saying made sense. But that’s the thing about fears; they’re also highly irrational. I was simply unable to let go of mine. Instead I put up a show for Claire and pretended I agreed with her. We continued to go about our business as if things were okay. But I knew they would not be for long.

And it turned out that I was right.

Our morning jog. A ritual since the start of our marriage. The day had dawned cool and clear, and we took the path we always took. We would conclude at a small café near our home for a breakfast of coffee and bagels. A doughnut if we were feeling like ignoring our cholesterol levels.

That morning Claire had been feeling particularly energetic. We’d reached the end of our route and were heading back in the direction of the café.

“Race you,” she giggled, “loser pays!” With that, she took off sprinting.

I groaned in protest, but pounded the pavement in pursuit anyway. I hate losing.

I saw the speeding car before Claire did. I know I cried out a desperate warning in spite of knowing it would be too late. I watched in horror as the car slammed into her, plastering her across the windshield and screeching to a halt as she flipped over and tumbled to the asphalt, deathly still.

I felt myself shutting down again. It had happened again, just like I knew it would. And I had been powerless to stop it.

***

Last night Claire came to me in a dream again. She was just as lovely as I remember her. Maybe a little sad. That’s my fault, I know.

“I miss you,” I told her.

“I know,” she answered.

“I love you,” I told her.

“I love you, too.”

“Why did you have to leave me?” I asked miserably.

“I never left you,” her voice quavered. “I’m with you, right here, right now. I’m here. Whenever you need me to be. I’ll be here.”

Then the dream faded away. It happens quite frequently. She comes to me like that, and I always wish it were so much more than a dream. My life has been a blur of nothingness since she was hit by that car. I wish I could wake from that dream and find that she really had come back to me. But I know it cannot be.

***

Dr. Claire Caldwell walked slowly from the room. She did her best to compose herself as she walked back to the admittance desk and pulled the ‘Visitor’ pass from her lapel.

“How’s he doing today, Dr. Caldwell?” the orderly on duty asked Claire, taking the pass from her.

“The same,” she replied with a sigh. “He just doesn’t know how to escape from that prison his mind created based on his irrational fear that he might one day lose me. When he saw me get hit by that car, I guess he just thought his worst fear had come true. And he just couldn’t deal with it anymore…”

END