In order to understand fear, you must first understand the difference between true fear and manufactured fear. Let me give you a personal example. I experienced true fear last year. It hit out of the blue. I had just come from an event at the local Indigenous Friendship Centre and it was a cool spring day. I had my route home laid out in my head. Stop at the art store in the mall, catch the bus to the University, walk to the grocery store and head home. Then it hit. Bam! The realization that I was being run over by a car that was backing up from a stop sign in a mall parking lot.
Hit from behind, I went down to the ground and ended up underneath the car. Everything seems to move really slow when the adrenalin rushes through your body. It’s like your mind starts recording in clips. I remember seeing the muffler and the undercarriage of the car and thinking ‘this isn’t right’. Then there was the realization that there were wheels coming toward my head. In the next instance the car stopped, went forward and once I saw the sky I bolted straight up.
It must have looked like I had risen from the dead as witnesses told me later that I was extremely lucky I wasn’t hurt. I was extremely lucky because it was these people that came to my aid otherwise, I would have been a speed-bump in thing called life.
The adrenalin doesn’t stop rushing through your body when the event ends. You are basically in shock and your body/mind/emotions goes into process mode. Even though someone offered me a ride, I was determined to continue my path home. I needed to process what had happened. While under that car I was consumed with the fear of my survival. The whole experience may have been a minute but it felt like an eternity. Dying and dying like this was not part of my story. I had a mission to fulfill and I wasn’t finished fulfilling it. But, this experience did enter my reality and it taught me something. In one moment, I am fighting for my life and the next moment, I am realizing I am safe. I am in one piece and I am alive.
