Am I slowly dying from fear of dying before I am even ill?
February 2020, Aarhus, Denmark
I’m lying down in my bed, right before sleeping, scrolling through my Facebook wall, seeing some posts and articles about the Coronavirus outbreak in China, making its way towards us in Europe, especially through Italy.
I feel anxiety sneaking into my body.
I read about people stranded inside a ship and quarantined in a hotel. A city bigger in population than the country I live in is on lockdown.
I feel a punch of fear going right through my stomach.
My husband is about to travel for business to another country, I start scrolling through the information about the Corona-numbers for that area. It’s close to zero.
I calm down just a little bit.
Then I see the numbers growing rapidly from zero to hundreds in just a few days.
I feel the punch of fear in my stomach and heaviness in my chest. My throat contracts and it’s difficult to breathe.
A thought of having my husband stranded on foreign grounds without a possibility to come back home feels unbearable.
Not only because it’s difficult to take care of three kids alone.
Mainly because a sheer thought of being separated from a loved one in times of disease evokes trauma.
From the depth of my inner-being, the trauma of facing my father’s sudden illness from afar is resurfacing.
And so is his death from an uncommon disease that sent his body into sepsis and had his organs fail him when he most needed them.
It wasn’t all that wise to scroll through Facebook right before going to sleep, was it?
How do I now gently sail off into the arms of Morpheus when my body is so pumped with adrenaline and cortisol?
I’ve been in this place so many times. There is no danger right now, yet, my body, my beast, is getting ready to face a deadly threat.
I start taking deep breaths in.
Sending calm all the way through my body.
I’m feeling better with every profound breath in and back into fear as soon as I come back to the normal breathing.
What is my problem right now? Right here, at this very moment?
Well, right now my biggest problem is that I’m freaking out on the account of something that may or may not happen in the future, based on what happened in the past.
Right now I am safe.
Right now, in this very moment, I am lying down safely in my bed, next to my husband.
We’re all safe.
Facing disease and death of our loved ones is not …
Is not what?
Is not even welcome in Western Culture.
There is one certain thing in this world: we are going to die. Definitely.
We have no idea how to deal with uncertainty. Yet, we suck in facing this one unquestionable certainty.
“I don’t want to die today, but if I were to die today, I want to know that I’ve been doing my best at living.”
And living in fear of something really bad happening, disease, or death makes me die slowly as I am still alive.
I have such easy access to fear. Great news! I must have just as easy access to the energies that outweigh the fear.
I’ve read somewhere that fear is the absence of love.
I imagine that love is around me and I start breathing it into my body. For a long time. It takes more practice to bring in the calming energies that the freaking-out energies. For now.
I stop resisting feeling the fear. I allow it all out. I am present with it.
Fear is energy. I can face energy.
I feel relief.
I awaken trust.
Trust that everything that is happening is happening for a reason. It’s happening in my highest and greatest good.
Why wouldn’t it?
Right now in this very moment, I have nothing to worry about.
And if I am to face something really difficult, I will have all the resources needed to deal with it.
Why wouldn’t I?