Written as I sat in the doctor's waiting room...
That metallic taste, the butterflies, the shallow breath. I remember this fear. That time I squished my whole body into a ball under a chair to escape the flailing strap of my grandfather. The tips of his belt got me across the ankles but he mostly missed. The time I jumped out of a moving car to run away from my stepfather and he drove the car up onto the footpath to chase me. Blind panic, the whooshing in your ears, the electric stab to the heart. That time the nurse said "I'm just going to pop the monitor on because the baby's having a few problems." That time the nurse said "It's alright just lie back." That time I already was lying back and I felt the world spin and drop away from me, monitors beeping and suddenly a lot of medical people around my bed and my mother leaning in close and whispering "they're testing you for leukaemia." That time I lost Alex in the shopping centre. All the terrible possibilities crowd into view in your mind's eye. Those times I rushed the children to the emergency room, with Chris barking at me that I was over-reacting. That time the doctor told me, "there are no good options here. You're a ticking time bomb."
Fear stabs, and prickles, and smothers and creeps. Your guts feel like they are going to drop right out of you. Then there's the other kind of fear, the kind that lurks, always there, always in the background, like a creepy guy across the room at a party who refuses to stop staring at you. Fear of abandonment. Fear of death. Fear of illness. Fear of your children growing up motherless - that one stands apart, unlike any other. I have to try to surrender what I cannot control. I grapple with it. It hangs on.
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