Mama Fear

I am afraid of dying. This sounds dumb I realize. I mean nobody wants to die, right? At least, not right now. Not before they've grown old and had a good life. Let me try to explain.

I think I was like all kids, okay I wasn't at all, but I think most kids run around oblivious to life and death. They don't think about things like that and it doesn't occupy their thoughts or cause them to worry. When I was in my early teens I was still living in oblivion. I used to walk all over the city with my friends late at night and never thought about any danger we could have been in.

After my fifteenth birthday a couple of things happened that shook me out of my happy little dream world. One of those things was an altercation my friend and I had while walking to a nearby store in broad daylight. We were confronted my five girls who basically wanted to beat us up for no reason. I told the story here. The other thing was a horrible tragedy that changed me forever. One of my good friends was killed in a car accident.

Suddenly the world wasn't so safe anymore. I had a severe reaction to these events. I was afraid to go anywhere, even in broad daylight. I thought that anyone might want to hurt me whether it was a mom pushing a stroller, an elderly gentleman out for a stroll or a tough looking girl or guy my age. If anyone was ever late I would assume that something horrible had happened to them. (I still struggle with this one even today.) I had learned that life could be short and people would sometimes want to hurt you for no reason at all.

As I also explained here, once I started doing TaeKwon Do I began feeling more confident and less paranoid. My quality of life was so much better than it had been in a number of years. I had no idea when I started doing martial arts that I would be a much happier and relaxed person. Perhaps this is the reason that TaeKwon Do is so much a part of me. Why I feel that a part of me is missing when I'm not doing it. Maybe that is why I've been feeling strange lately.

Another thing that I had mentioned at the end of this post was about being afraid. I touched on some of the reasons I thought may have been the cause. Now I'm pretty sure I know what is going on.

The responsibility of being a mother is enormous. The fear I often feel is directly related to that. When I have to go out to my car after work and it's dark and no one is around I find myself thinking “I can't let anything happen to me. A needs me.” It's a feeling I've never had before. After doing TaeKwon Do I began feeling confident about taking care of myself. I never allowed myself to think about the consequences of something happening to me. Now I can't stop. I think about it when I'm driving, when I'm walking, when I'm working. This feeling of being so important, so vital to another person... It's almost suffocating. Yet another thing I hadn't thought about before making this jump into motherhood. Would I go back if I could? No. But sometimes... most of the time, it's pretty overwhelming.