Today, just like many other days, I woke up early in the morning around 4 or 5 am with a huge, fuzzy, reactive, ball of fear inside my chest. Strangely enough, I could feel as if it’s rotating and it’s eagerly waiting and getting ready… ready to explode and unleash itself to my whole body, take control over it, over me and my life!
I could feel my body getting ready for it, to save itself perhaps… it could save itself by releasing some of that fear in some kind of energy in case it explodes. My body got restless, as I kept changing my position or the way my legs folded and unfolded themselves like a robot - but a malfunctioned one - each time of different magnitude of fold subtending a different angle and in different direction. They positioned themselves around, above, beside, near, away from each other, over and over again.
My hands had their own malfunctioned rhythm - clenching together, clenching separately, under the pillow, above my chest, over my head, above my forehead, hugging myself, between my thighs and in so many more ways.
My breaths started pacing up, as if I needed to breathe more air to cool something inside inhaling, or to get something out quicker exhaling. Sometimes deeper breaths instead of fast shallow ones; maybe those ones will be able to reach to the innermost core of that ball thing. It was all getting ready.
It probably reminded me of what I was scared of at that time but not now exactly when I write this. And how scary it is sometimes to be scared of something that you don’t even know about; as if you’re blindfolded, and then asked to guess if those slender legs are of a spider or a cockroach or of a tarantula, that’s crawling up your skin. Better the demon you know than the one you don’t, isn’t it?
However, I spent a few seconds or minutes with that ball and suddenly a voice inside me told me to chant. I started chanting, “I am safe. I am safe. I am safe.” It didn’t feel better. I felt stupid but I kept repeating. Nothing happened. I kept chanting, but this time, I tried to feel how safe I really am - how warm I am under my thick blanket cocooned by it, how my face is buried cozily inside the pillow, how I had my other pillow to hold and grab tightly and that - under the blanket, on this bed, in my room, when it’s 0oC outside, I am safe; that in this very moment, I-am-safe.
The early morning bird somewhere near my window chirped to tell me in its own way that it’s okay. The ball suddenly started losing its power as it started dissolving into nothing.
I felt better as my breaths slowed down; and in no time, I went to sleep again.
Now while I write I wonder, if it’s something meant to explode and I just delayed it, delayed it to the next morning perhaps?
Or probably it was an illusion all along - being scared of something that I am indeed seeing… but all I needed to do is just shake and disturb the surface of the water to know it isn’t real.