The Mirror Image of a Shattered Love

This was an essay I was asked to write for Honors College English, I was asked to write about my greatest fear. A prompt derived from the book 1984 by George Orwell, and this is what I submitted. I hope you enjoy.

The Mirror Image of a Shattered Love

I'm not going to lie and say that this paper is easy for me to write, in fact, I dreaded the moment I knew I had to sit down and do this, the action of putting it all into words. I hated the in class discussions we had about ones greatest fears, I could feel a sinking feeling inside me as I was snapped back to reality. Like a slap in the face, this thought of true fear alone terrified me and several times I had to fight the tears and build mind blocks to keep terrible thoughts and images from rushing forward and perhaps ruining my day. I could take the easy way out and give a list of my so called greatest fears, the fear of death, of being alone, the fear of rejection, but that's not what I feel this paper was meant for, that's not what was asked of me. So I'm trying my hardest to push past my comfortable zone and at the same time to hold back the intense emotions that are rushing forward as I open my mind. It's hard for me to sit here and think about my fears, the one thing I fear more than anything else in the entire world. To open up my mind and get past all of the petty things like the fear of spiders, heights, snakes, fire, water, to get past all of the phobias and to see what I am truly afraid of. It's an extremely difficult and emotionally daunting task to push past all of the barriers and open up my mind to vulnerability and to actually contemplate the worst case scenario or my worst fear.

In the end though I think it comes down to finding what makes you the happiest in life, the best case scenario, and then reversing it like an image, turning the blacks to whites. For me, at least at this point in my life, the thing that makes me the happiest in life, the thing that I love more than anything I've ever known is my friends and my family. The select few people on this earth that can always make me smile, the people who love me unconditionally, the people I feel so safe around, I can tell them anything my heart desires, and they always understand me. Loosing those people, all of them, or one of them, would truly break my world. Splinters of life as I had known it, my now former life, flying through time and space like the shards of a broken mirror, something that once reflected happiness, now broken for eternity.

To add insult to injury it would be even worse if I lost someone from my own hand, if my own fault caused their disappearance or death, I would never be able to live with myself. The loss of them, the thought of it being my fault, the guilt would torture me for all of time. Not only would I have to deal with the grief of losing them, I'd have to deal with the guilt of it being my fault and of causing such pain unto them and their loved ones.

If something happened to someone I loved, let's say that my oldest brother was to die, I would be completely devastated. How to cope with a loss like that would not be within my mind. He means so much to me that I would be lost without him, my entire world would fall to pieces. I suppose I'd try my hardest to surround myself with loved ones, but I would honestly feel like a piece of me was missing.

Facing your biggest fear may be the hardest thing to do in life, the hardest challenge to face. The worst part about this fear is that I know I will have to face it sooner or later. I can only hope that when the day comes that I have to stand up and conquer my fear straight up, that I will be emotionally stable and content in my life as well as having a wonderful support group by my side. I know in my heart that no one can replace anyone that I love; I will have to cherish their memories, and try my hardest to savor the moments while they are happening, making the most of my loved ones and the time we share together. I'll try not to take advantage of them or anything in life, because life is too short to fuss over all the small things.

Without bad there would be no good, without horrible things in this world there would be no true goodness, no happiness without grief or sorrow, no love without hate. Everything would be mediocre. So one has to take life with the good and bad, the vice and virtue, all the happiness with all the fear; if not, life isn't life, it's just existence.