Fear.

Art : The Bucket.

By Sakuan.

Sup, what are my deepest fears, I have several, they’re personal so I can’t really go into detail with some of them, because I believe in the saying, “there’s no secret between two people.” There’s one specific fear that’s always on my mind, one that will break me if it ever happens, and I’m not sure how I’ll cope. Maybe at the time of it happening, just maybe, I will be stronger and have a different mindset then, but as of now, it’ll break me, at least that’s what I think. I’m sure you’re curious by now about what that might be, should I talk about it? What’s the point of sharing, is it all selfish, do you share so that you can feel better? What’s the point of that, or maybe, sharing with one person is for your own benefit, but sharing with the world is to help other people, I don’t know if I articulated that well but I think that’s it. By the way, everything I say on my blogs is me just having random thoughts, these are things I think about, things that have helped me in my life throughout my experiences, things that I’ve learned, so by any stretch I’m not trying to force my actions on you, but rather I’m just telling you about me, and if it happens to help you, great, because that’s what I strive to do, and if not, well, I wish life wasn’t complicated.

I think I should start with some of my fears, they’re not that major but they are there: being a failure in what I’m trying to accomplish, not having children in my lifetime, breakups in relationships, toxic relationships, being with someone who doesn’t get me or I don’t get them, death used to be a big fear of mine when I was young, no one caring about my art (this particular thought is weird for me, because it’s not necessarily fear that haunts me, but rather the fact that I don’t know what I’ll think or what I’ll do if that was to happen in the future, failing after working as hard as I am right now, and that scares me, but I don’t really think too much about it, I apply a stoic mindset in such scenarios, I did my best and how people react to it is out of my control, deep inside it’s a scary thought, another big fear of mine is if I have a daughter in the future and she gets abused, that really scares me just thinking about it brings a tear to my eye. I want to do everything to protect her, and I will, but at the same time I don’t want to be an overprotective father, raising kids is hard, my heart goes out to all single parents out there who are trying their best. I’m scared of success sometimes, I don’t know why it scares me, what goes on in my head when I think about success is, I’m an introvert who makes art (by art I mean mainly drawing and writing), in a financial sense an artist’s success is measured by the number of people your art touches, the number of people who are willing to pay you for your art. I’m not really that social, so people knowing me and reaching out to me scares me, but maybe that’ll change when I start experiencing it at a macro level. We adjust to our surroundings as human beings, some faster than others, I tend to fall on the other side of the graph. Of course, it’s my hope as an artist for my art to touch and move people, at what cost though, will I have to sacrifice my space? Everything great comes with a sacrifice, and I’m trying to accomplish something great with this work that I make. Fame scares me, I have to build a brand, that will require other people to know my work, hence end up knowing me, and that’s scary to me. With what I’m doing now with my life, it’s like I’m chasing my fear, but I have to, I told myself to not let fear dictate my life. I guess some of the fear comes with the insecurity of being an introvert, I don’t know how I’ll react when someone tells me something like, “your work really helps me,” or “I really love your drawings.” A thank you is not enough from me because them acknowledging me does way more for me than a thank you can do for them, them acknowledging me inspires me to do more, and in some cases, it also puts food on my table, but a thank you doesn’t really do much in my eyes for them, maybe I’m looking at it the wrong way. How am I even supposed to look at it then? I can’t just turn on a switch and ta-da everything is cool now; I wish it were that simple.

If you haven’t noticed yet, I’m trying to avoid talking about my deepest fear, that might be because I’m scared to even think about it, it scares the hell out of me. The funny thing is, I think to some extent it’s unfair that my greatest fear is out of my control, it’s not something that I can learn from it through experience. Let’s say I have a fear of heights then all I have to do to face it is to expose myself to heights, if I had fear of elevators then I could also expose myself to elevators and learn through the experiences, and these are just but a few examples. Before you say it, no it’s not death, I’ve already come to accept my fate, I used to be scared of death when I was young, both my own and my family’s, I lived in a neighborhood that wasn’t that great, news of people found dead in ditches was common,  that really took a toll on my younger self, and I’m talking kindergarten and elementary young.  I never shared my feelings with anybody, I usually just isolated myself from the other kids, and cried by myself for the most part, what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger, I guess. I should’ve been having fun, learning how to mingle with other kids, but there I was, isolated, thinking about all the death that was going on around me. Then I grew up and I learned a lot, now I’m not scared about it anymore. That childhood experience affected me a lot, I can see its fruits in my adulthood, I still isolate myself a lot, maybe that explains why I do so. My deepest fear right now is still associated with death, but not mine this time, my mother’s, it’s not necessarily just death. My mother has sacrificed a lot for me and my brothers, she has done her best to keep my family together, it’s hard to even type this without tears. I work so fuckin hard every day so that she can experience what it’s like to live a life without having money problems. That’s why I work so hard, and if, God forbid, if she were to leave this earth without ever having to experience a life where money wasn’t the only goal, it would break my heart…