Sydney- Fear
It is amazing that so many of our colloquial phrases about fear are so on the
nose. “Scared shitless”, is a real thing, some people when frightened have to
run straight to the bathroom. The fear shakes them literally “to the core” and
they must relieve themselves. “Paralyzed by fear”, Sydney recently discovered
is a real thing too. While traveling in Spain she had a first hand encounter
with this brand of fright. She had gone up to Pamplona to visit her beloved
brother and was quite enjoying her stay and her ultra, adult-like independence.
No
longer with her group from school, she had booked a bed in a hostel. By sheer
luck she had a six-person room to herself one night and only one “compañera de
cuarto” the second. Upon returning late to her room the third night Sydney saw
a lump in one of her many beds and thought of course, its another girl. So she
showered, and feeling sleepy, comfortable and warm she hopped into bed in some
fairly large underwear and a t-shirt. It was at 3:30 am that ol’ Syd
experienced the fright of her life
She
woke abruptly to the voice of a strange man in her newly found sanctum. Said
man in the pitch dark was talking rapidly in a language Sydney did not
understand. Her heart stopped. “How did a man get in here?” “What’s he doing?!”
“Holy shit! Why am I not wearing pants?”
She sat so still that
she could hear his every heavy masculine breath. After moments of lifeless fear
and listening, She determined said man was speaking German, and he was sleep
talking. While texting her best friends, so that someone would know why she had
died, the light dawned on her.
There
was no other girl in this room. The lump had been a man all along. She sat
still lifeless, until slowly regaining her faculties, finger by finger, she
turned herself forcibly towards this body-less voice, so that she could engage
in the proper fight or flight.
After
sitting/laying perfectly petrified and freaked out for about an hour, she
drifted back off to sleep. The morning light and the comfort of pants, showed the
scary German body-less man to be an extremely sweet Swiss-German boy. He spoke
in a lovely broken English to his new silly friend and joked after apologizing
for frightening her with his abnormal nocturnal speech patterns.
That
kind of irrational nighttime, boogey monster fear was and had always been a
part of Sydney’s life and most often it resolved just as happily. Sydney took
it as a marker and a fair trade for an active imagination. But there was
another fear she was not so proud of, which had also reigned during a period of
her life.
As
a girl in Texas Sydney had been shy but happy, content with her friends, family
and life. Unfortunately, being uprooted from this group and place did not start
off so well. Timid and clad in children’s hand-me-downs Sydney walked into Due
West Elementary School, and from day one she could tell it wasn’t going to be a
cakewalk. She was a stranger, an outsider and (a new term to her also) a dork.
While trying to survive and make at least one real friend, Sydney adopted the
“keep your head down” mentality, especially on the school bus. If she kept from
standing out and sat close to the front, she escaped everyday, home to the
safety of her dogs and family.
It
was during this self-preservation phase that she observed some of the worst
bullying of her life. You’ve heard of the totem pole right? Well luckily for
Sydney there was one kid below her, who’s weirdness was painted on him in the
brightest neon yellow. This boy lived outside her neighborhood with his Mormon
mother and Jewish father. He was white as paper and had dark circles so large,
that he looked quite akin to the garden-variety raccoon. Adam might not have
been doing ok, because he went to the school counselor a lot. And unfortunately
he was incapable of blending in, in any way. Everyday when he got off the bus
he bade everyone “Shalom”, to the ridicule of his wolf-like peers.
One
day this poor boy made a fatal mistake, having forgot his viola in the
orchestra room, he abandoned his backpack to run for his instrument. One of his
many tormentors did not let such a golden opportunity pass. He, meaning to go
through the boy’s stuff, snatched his backpack from its place on the cracked
brown leather seat. He didn’t have to dig any further. Behind the backpack a
smaller bag had been concealed, it was the size of a 90’s backpack purse, and
was decorated with a giant smiley face.
Adam
ran onto the bus, happy to have reached it in time with his newly retrieved
instrument. It was a blood bath. The kids made fun of him relentlessly. To this
day she remembers that poor boy crying and shaking, clinging to that tiny
little backpack for dear life.
In
that moment she had neither been brave nor self-less. Instead of defending that
boy, she sat back helpless as she watched the onslaught. Like a dog in a Jack
London novel, she let her instincts win and watched the weak be attacked by the
strong. She never did find out what became of Adam. Soon his parents pulled him
out of school and she never saw him again.
It was fear that had restrained her that
day. Fear of ridicule, of the cool kids, of falling into an even lower rung of
the food chain. That primordial fear allowed her to watch someone suffer
needlessly, rather than risk her own neck.
