Collin Willis

“an unpleasant emotion caused by the belief that someone or something is dangerous, likely to cause pain, or a threat.“

Oxford Languages Dictionary

When I wrote Blinding Sparks, I intended it to be a single piece. A week later I wrote Coda and much like a musical coda that was intended to be the final verse. Yet as I’ve taken more and more time to process and discuss, I keep encountering facets of my story and my own being that I feel the need to think through. I’ve always been a reflective person, but placing myself under the knife in this dissection has yielded a lot more questions and (hopefully) answers than I initially thought it would. Today I’d like to talk about fear; where it comes from and its role as a motivating force in our lives.

Fearing Your Partner

Fear plays an interesting role in our lives. How dare we let it motivate us? How dare we let it into our decision-making, into our livelihoods, into our relationships?

Robert California

I spent almost everyday of my previous relationship in fear. I was afraid of the moment she would go off. I didn’t know when it would come or what would be the spark that lit her fuse, but I knew that an explosion was inevitable. Explosive, reactionary, and often times pre-emptive, responses were her bread and butter. She chose to deal with fear by scorching the earth around her. Repetitive exposure to that response conditioned me to mimic the response of the armadillo or the opossum. I would spend all day in fear of the inevitable moment and when it came I would curl up and just wait for it to be over. It only took a few emotional beatings for me to realize just how powerless I was in those instances. Occasionally the degree to which she had hurt me, once she realized what she had done, would calm her down. More often than not it didn’t matter though, because her blinders were on and no one was ever going to be more important to her than herself.

As constant of a factor as fear was in the relationship, fear was also my primary motivator for staying in the relationship. Fear came about in several different ways. One, I was afraid that in leaving her I would be setting her up for further hurt. Two, I was afraid that I was simply not as strong as I felt I should have been to maintain the relationship and both of our mental states. Three, I was afraid of what she would do to me if I chose to get out of the relationship. Four, I was afraid that the damage she did to me was, in some ways, irreparable. In the end I had to come face to face with all four of these fears. My own cowardice when I first discovered these fears ultimately made them much worse when they were realized. Had I had more resolve in the beginning and stuck to what I knew I needed to do as time went on I probably could have saved the both of us from a lot more hurt than we experienced.

One: Further Hurt

It is easy for me to mistake my own people pleasing behaviors as altruism. I think that for most of us, we struggle seeing ourselves as intrinsically fallible. Caring for others is not a bad thing, but often times my need to people please comes at the expense of my own desires and ambitions. I let what people think of me and how I believe they’ll react to what I say or want dictate how actively I pursue what I actually want to say or do. That is a flaw within my being and it comes from a fear of being disliked or ostracized.

I knew that my relationship was killing me and that it was something that I needed to get out of, but I kept making excuses out of a fear of losing what was familiar. There was comfort in that familiarity and I chose only to focus on the good days in these moments because I was afraid of losing them, even if they were the overwhelming minority. So I told myself I was doing the right thing in forgiving and continuing, duping myself into a sense of altruism when really it was fear motivating my actions. This doesn’t make forgiveness or second chances wrong in any context, but it is now a glaring reminder to me that heart checks need to be done more often than not.

Fear is never a good motivator. Holding onto a burning log out of fear that the fire might runout is nothing but a way to get yourself burned. I often think about the moment I knew that I loved her, because that moment is one rooted in fear. I was afraid of the fire going out and I got burned by something that clearly shouldn’t have been held onto.

It was the first time I tried to end the relationship. She had just lashed out at me in the worst way she’d done till that point, the night I couldn’t do anything but cry. I knew that I needed to get myself out. I went to her house, sat down, and barely got the words “I’m breaking up with you” out before I broke down in tears. It was then that she did the most unexpected thing.

She didn’t get mad or distant, she didn’t begin to berate and blame as she usually did; she just walked over and wrapped me in a big hug. It caught me off guard because it was one of the few genuine moments when her narcissism and psychopathy weren’t in the driver’s seat. I knew in that exact moment how much I cared for her underneath all of the hurt and my fear of losing that resurfaced with intensity. I was afraid that I was giving up on something that contained this moment of genuine care and ignored the soul crushing reasons that had lead to the creation of that moment. I chose that day to stay in the relationship not because of altruism or belief that it could truly get better, but because I was afraid of losing that depth of emotion with someone.

Two: Not Strong Enough

Growing up in the Midwest, the duties and expectations of the male in a relationship are things that were hammered home pretty hard. The man is supposed to be strong, supportive, capable of leading, and providing. These are not bad things by any means, and men should strive to be any of them whether they are in a relationship or not. That said, the extreme to which these expectations can be laid often makes Superman the standard for masculinity. If you are anything less than bulletproof, you aren’t “man enough”.

I did not see any other option than to take the abuse. That was the manly thing to do, to be strong and supportive when she was at her worst. I felt it was my duty to take the hits, I felt like I needed to be bulletproof. You cannot pour from an empty cup, and cups that are peppered with bullet holes are rarely anything but empty.

I would feel guilty for being upset. This wasn’t entirely her fault. She did not wire me this way, though she did at times take offense to me being upset by something she’d done. I would feel bad for being hurt after she would intentionally say things to hurt and get a rise out of me, and so I would convince myself that I was some kind of emotional Wolverine, capable of healing extra fast from her wounds. This lead me back to the battlefield when I was already injured and waving the white flag.

Three: Fear of What Comes Next

Conjoined with this fear of not being strong enough and the need to prove myself was the fear of what would happen if I separated myself from her. I had already seen how she treated the people who’d crossed her before. I knew about a falling out with one of her first friends in Orlando (though I would later find out the truth behind it post-breakup). I knew what had happened to her roommate when she made plans without her. I knew what happened to all the people who attended those plans after being told that she wouldn’t be upset. I knew that this girl was a steamroller with a lead foot and zero propensity to think of what steamrollers did when they rolled over people.

Fear kept me rooted until I could find a minimum safe distance. I was afraid of being her next victim. I was afraid of all the rumors and sideways glances. I was afraid of the apathy and how the friends who stood by me would be treated. So I waited and I kept finding reasons why staying together was actually the right thing to do. Again I duped myself into living with the toxicity and abuse. The anticipation of pain is often worse than the pain itself. When I was a kid I would cry before I got a shot for minutes before the needle was even out. In this relationship I found myself chained to the same motivating factors. I was afraid of what might happen, without the understanding that a temporary pain now was much better than the recurring pain I was already dealing with.

Fear kept me in this relationship, it walked me back from “I’m breaking up with you” to “we can make it work if you say we can”. Fear motivated me, it consumed me, it dictated me.

In the End

In the end those fears had to be dealt with. I had to risk losing the good days in order to save myself from the bad ones. It was getting to the point where I was getting anxiety attacks and would just find myself frozen. It was like Atlas suddenly dropped the heavens and I could feel them crushing down on me. And I would hear her words or see the text messages she’d sent before in my head and just feel trapped.

In the end I had to reconcile the simple fact that I am not bulletproof. I do not like to lose. Admitting defeat, that I was incapable of saving myself or this young woman from pain was an extremely difficult thing for me to reconcile with. I could not absorb her blows and bounce back like I told myself I needed to.

In the end she did all of the things I was afraid she would do. She steamrolled without a second’s hesitation and I found myself in the same position that so many others had found themselves before. I had to come face to face with all her lying, the ways she manipulated others, the ways she bullied and threatened others, and the inevitability of her crushing blows. Fear continued to be a primary motivator as I saw her go further and further, minimizing my trauma and making me feel like I was worthless and tainted.

I was, and to a certain degree still am, afraid of her. It got so bad that one day when I came home to find the door unlocked, I feared she might attack me. I pushed open the door and readied myself to die. This is an extreme anxiety but after having witnessed her total lack of inhibition and self control I was afraid that physical violence was sure to follow the emotional violence. I swept the whole house with my umbrella out, ready to at least try to defend myself before it came. It turns out my roommates had just stepped out for a moment. It was a non-event but it made me realize just how deep seated my fear was and just how much of a dominating force it had become. I had grown out of her abuse but it had grown to be something much larger than it should have been.

Four: Beyond Repair

After the breakup I was afraid that what she had done to me was permanent. We have officially been broken up longer than we were together but her scars run deep. In the weeks following our split, as I began to deal with her steamrolling, I found myself afraid that I didn’t know up from down anymore. I learned things about what she’d done to others in the past. I learned the truths to lies she had consistently poured in my ears. It got to a point where I wasn’t sure if I trusted anything she had ever told me about herself or her past because of the extent to which I had learned the truth about her present.

Every time I find myself running into an anxiety or fear that took hold while we were together I question; “How long is this going to be a part of me?”. It’s taken a lot to address these fears and merely identify their existence within me. I’ve gotten better with some, but others are still motivating factors in my day to day life. I still wonder, “is it over yet?”.

I posted Blinding Sparks fearful of how she might bring repercussions, but at that point she’d already taken from me the things I feared losing most. In the weeks since, I’ve found myself quelling some of those fears. I feel safe enough to process, to stand up, and most importantly to heal. There is a fear that the damage she’s done is in some ways irreparable but now I know that fear by name. There’s a great quote by Fred Rogers about the mention-ability of our emotions that I’d like to share here.

“Anything that’s human is mentionable, and anything that is mentionable can be more manageable. When we can talk about our feelings, they become less overwhelming, less upsetting, and less scary. The people we trust with that important talk can help us know that we are not alone.”

Fred Rogers

I know my fears. I know where they came from. I know the responses they entice me to. I know them and in time I will conquer them, not because I’m strong enough but because I will have made the effort to heal and care for myself.

Closing Thoughts

I do not know how long it’s going to take to heal. I thought talking about her would be a one and done deal, but fault lines don’t repair overnight. This blog has been a safe space, (along with friends, family, and therapy), that I am grateful for. I intend to keep using it to help process what happened to me and hopefully to help others do the same. I know more about fear now than I did eight months ago, but more importantly I also know more about myself. That self-actualization is the steel that comes from an iron in the fire and I know that in time those fears will become incapable of controlling me in the ways they have before. And so I would like to end this blog much like I began it, with a quote.

It is your story, and it is always wise to understand those who have a hold on you. 

The Djinn (Three Thousand Years of Longing)

Here is to understanding those within my story, I hope that it helps you understand those within yours.