Scared

Have you ever had a crippling fear? Something that terrified you to your very core, and whenever you thought about it, you actually felt physically ill? I try not to be scared of too many things. A woman has to be tough in this society. Sure, I'm afraid of things not happening for me in life. Everybody fears that. But the one thing that is my Achille's Heel is death.

Part of it is because I'm not certain there is a heaven. I've had too many unanswered prayers to trust fully in a higher power. What if life on earth is it, and after we die our souls cease to exist? That's scary enough for me (I'm shaking as I write this), but what if there really is eternity? The idea of forever scares me too. A ceaseless existence? I don't know what to feel or believe, and the fact that I don't know yet scares me too.

Sometimes I'm able to push my fears back, and sometimes they don't even come to mind at all, but when they do, I literally feel like I can't function. I know this is not normal. Will I someday come to terms with dying, or will I, in my final moments, say what Joan Crawford said as her housekeeper prayed over her: "Don't you dare ask Him for help!"

Heard this song last night and felt a little more at ease.

"Melancholy Child"
Pam Tillis
A baby with a baby
Just barely seventeen
My mother mourned her innocence
While she bounced me on her knee

A daddy on the road
Added to her tears and trials
Like silver rain they fell upon
This melancholy child

The sounds of my childhood
Still linger in my song
My mother's lullaby
That train that ran behind our home

A whippoorwill on a window sill
It should have made me smile
But everything sounds lonesome
To a melancholy child

Now a restless blood
Runs in our family
Thought I could outrun
The emptiness inside of me

So I went a little crazy
I went a little wild
Trying to outdistance
My own melancholy child

I met a kind and gentle man
Who thinks the world of me
And when he looks my way
It is a woman that he sees

But when I can't explain to him
The tears that fill my eyes
He takes me in his arms
And rocks his melancholy child

You take a black Irish temper
And some solemn Cherokee
A Southern sense of humor
And you got someone like me

But there are thorns on every rose
To this I'm reconciled
They're just a little sharper
To a melancholy child

And in my own babe's eyes
I see the signs of a melancholy child
Heaven help us all
Another melancholy child