Fear

[Athos]

Fort Minor - Slip out the back (High Quality Version)

Hey guys, today I’ve decided that today I want to share some of my thoughts and experiences concerning something that we’ve all had to face in one way or another: Fear.

Saying what I’m about to say is going to be very difficult for me and some of you might think it makes me a coward, or that I’m just trying to get attention or be deliberately dramatic.  If you do, so be it. While you’re all free to read and comment, I’m writing this for me because I feel I need to at this point in time.

There hasn’t been a time in my life that I can think of when I haven’t been afraid in one way or another. Sometimes I feel like I’ve always been afraid.

Mostly I’m afraid of what I would deem to be “the regular things:” that people wouldn’t like me, that I won’t amount to anything, that I would lose my loved ones, that I would always be alone. As I grew into my teens, these things continued to be there but there also came things of a more serious nature.

From the sixth grade to the eighth, I attended one of those “inner city” schools everyone hears about and I have to admit, things there were tough. Now I don’t want to sound like I’m being overly dramatic, after all I’m from Canada so it’s not like we had kids running around with automatic weapons. However, over this three year period I lost track of the number of times I was forced to physically defend myself. As well I had knives drawn on me on two separate occasions. Frankly, it was some nasty business, but I thankfully made it through without getting anything more than the occasional black eye. Even though it was a scary time in my life, it never really occurred to me that I might not make it home.
That fear, unfortunately, came later.

Fast forward to October of 2011: I’m twenty-four, physically fit and going to school to get into law enforcement. It’s a Saturday night turned Sunday morning and I’m coming home from a bar located down the block from my home. Now I’ve been coming and going from this establishment since I was 19 and I’ve never had a problem with anyone. As I round the corner onto my street, my mind suddenly goes blank. The next thing I know, it’s nearly an hour later and I’m inside my house with no recollection of how I got there. There are people standing around me, lots of them, and their talking to me but I can’t make sense of what their saying. I look down at myself, and realize that my favourite green t-shirt is now drenched in red.

At first I don’t understand what the liquid is, but as my mind slowly starts to work I realize it’s my blood. There’s not a few drops here and there, but a torrent of it still coming from my face and as I look around I realize that it’s not just my shirt that soaked with it, but my pants, several towels, the bathroom floor, the mirror, the shower, even the fucking toilet. My entire bathroom looks like a scene out of Saw, and it all came from me.

To this day I don’t remember what happened. The who, what, when and where have luckily been filled in by various people who came to my defence that night as well as the police investigation. The why, still to this day, remains a mystery. I’m not going to go too much into detail, but sufficed to say,
I highly doubt I’ll ever know what exactly happened. He (the man who attacked me) has his story and I have no memory intact with which to refute it.

As a result of the attack, I suffered a concussion, a broken nose, and two fractures to the ethmoid bone in the face as well as numerous lacerations and bruises and broken teeth. The nose has since been set and it, along with the other fractures, has healed. My concussion has healed for the most part, but I’m still prone to spells of dizziness and headaches during heavy exertion and I’ve also come close to fainting a few times.

Physically, I continue to work at getting stronger, but it’s difficult. Mentally I try to keep myself going, which I think I’ve done a pretty good job of overall. However, it’s not without difficulty. Since the attack I’ve bounced between depression and rage. I’ve come into contact with my assailant three times since then. Two of the times, I’ve had to work with all my strength to keep from going after him and the third I simply froze. There’s  a part of me that feels like a coward for feeling the way I do. I feel like I shouldn’t have any fear at all, but I know that’s a stupid notion. As my use of force instructor told us: I fear the man who has no fear. The truth is, everyone who enters a violent or potentially violent situation is scared on some level. You’d have to be psychotic not to be.

So now the question put to me by some of my family and friends, why would I want to begin a career in law enforcement given my experiences and the possibility that I will end up in a similar situation again. Truthfully, that’s a hard question to answer. My feelings on the matter have been conflicted and contradictory, but at the end of the day I think the best explanation comes in the form of the song I posted above.

"You know me, I used to get caught up in everyday life
Tried to make it through my day so I could sleep at night
Tried to figure out my way through the maze
Of rights and wrongs, but like you used to say
Nothing feels like it's really worth it
Forget perfect, I'm trying not to be worthless
Since I last saw you I been looking for a purpose"

Simply said: I feel like it’s my purpose. I don’t want to end up letting my fear rule me so that I end up taking the safe path. Whether or not I end up as a police officer, or serving in some other function, I know I have to continue onward despite being terrified a good deal of the time. 

[Oniya]

I once heard that 'Courage is not the absence of fear.  Courage is the ability to face your fear and overcome it to do what needs to be done.'  You talk to any cop, and I'm sure he (or she) will tell you plenty of stories about times that Fear was standing right next to them, but they still did what needed to be done.  I can think of plenty of reasons why someone who has survived a violent attack would want to go into law enforcement.  The first one that comes to mind is to help other people that are in similar situations (or to even prevent those situations from happening in the first place.)

[sava]

I have often thought on fear. I once read that protection from fear manifests as psychic layers, as we grow, the more layers we collect. As an adult we can peel back the layers (the deeper we get), the better we can understand our vulnerabilities and the person who we really are.

I do not know if it is true or not but lets consider the implications: You faced your assailant and did not respond in kind. I think that says something about you, the real you. One time you froze. You stopped, the real you held the constructed you at bay, it would not allow you to lower yourself to that level. I would suggest that you are not a violent person and do not want to become one, that deep down you abhore it.

I have heard it said that violence is the whore of a coward. This would suggest that your attacker feared you in some rational but much more likely irrational manner which provoked his violence.

To respond such as you did, shows a type of character not found in many, and personally I think we would be better having someone like you in a position to uphold laws.

For what it is worth...

~S.