The Fear Thing

I didn't know it was fear.

It would come down in darkness, blinkering my vision, narrowing my focus to a blurred tunnel. I was invaded, although my eyes could still see, just as my mouth could still move even though I felt muted and powerless. I became clumsy and vague. If it went on long enough, I began to shake, huge whiplashing jerks of the arms and legs, or rapid fire fluttering in my eyes, a shuttering of the jaw.

I was terrified it would happen on the back of a horse. The jerking, the emotional blindness. Riding is a matter of focus, of awareness on the part of the rider, a clarity of mind and body that communicates to the horse and directs its responsiveness. And though I did not know that what I was feeling was fear, I did know the way power and consciousness drained out of me and left me more than lost.

It came to me in therapy, when my therapist asked me a question: "What is it you can't tell your mother about? What is hiding in that corner?" I looked at the corner and began to tremble, tremble all over with fear. Deeper than fear -- panic, terror, the horses of the chariot of the god of war. Fear took my body, my soul, my mind -- raw, unmediated by thought or words. I couldn't move or open my eyes.

This is the way an animal must experience fear -- with nothing before it or after it, no ability to plan or even imagine the route out of the burning barn. But animals live all their lives in wordlessness, without speech. I went from articulate and thoughtful -- from having a sense or concept of self -- to instinctive and afraid, obliterated inside fear, all the layers of my being gone, stripped to the bone. The charioteer fallen and the two horses crashing into each other inside me.

My therapist said, "I can move closer if you like," and I said, "Don't move!" The thought of movement, closer or further was like a tiger coming out of that dark night. Slowly she began to talk me down. "Breathe," she said, and like I was on the back of a horse, I forced myself to exhale. "Feel your feet on the ground, take your hands and squeeze your legs, feel the big muscles of your thighs." Remembering who I was had to begin with remembering the body. "Can you open your eyes?" she asked and after a long time, I opened my eyes. Fear was still there, but it no longer owned me, it no longer was me, I was a separate being and alive.

After that session, the Fear Thing became more visible, more present in my life. I had episodes of hyperventilation, whole days of panic and fear. A bridge had been crossed, a gap had been bridged. What had been held so long in my body had become present to my mind. The namesless had a name -- Fear.

Writing this, I feel the separation of the parts of me and the energy that arcs between them like a sudden jolt of electricity. We are taught to master the horses of our body, not to befriend them. We treat our deepest instincts without tenderness or grace. When the body-horse bolts or shies, the mind punishes it with a brutal fury I would never use on an animal.

I wondered earlier what it is I am so afraid of when I'm on a horse, why I fight so hard. Perhaps in opening to the horse, to the flow of its energy, I must open to myself, to my unknown instinctive body and the grief it holds.

The fear has drained me. It's the cause of the migraines. It makes me clumsy and blank. I once put the saddle on backwards, my hands slick with confusion and sweat. Fear produces itself, it runs ahead and creates reasons for its existence.

But I always kept riding. I want to learn. I want to be soft and open to the animal in myself, without losing my humanity inside it. It's an impossible task that extends far beyond a lifetime. Every day I learn.