AUTHOR'S CORNER;
THE BOOGIE MAN
Most of us fear, because fear is real; it seeps through your senses and conquers your very essence, creeping through your veins and nesting inside your brain, thumping inside your heart. That's what fear is. Fear can be big or small, significant or non significant, black and white or in technicolor, but know this, no matter what the shape may be, it's yours, your fear, your shit, your dark place!
Some seek to suppress it by busying themselves; they turn into workaholics, they get involved in political crap, they become perfect model citizens, they party, they love, they hate, they smoke, they drink, they self medicate with drugs. They wake up each morning with sheer dread in their ribs and a weight upon their shoulders they simply can't explain; but they know it's there, it's real, and very, very present. The only sane option is to drag themselves out of that bed and get obsessing about whatever vice they have invented for themselves; get back on that metaphorical treadmill, because it's that treadmill that holds their sanity, their wealth and well being, it's that treadmill that is the thin fine line that keeps them in the world of normality.
Creative people do it the best; they recreate what they fear through their fictional occupation, they paint, they compose music, they write the world to rights! Altering and changing here and there, laying out a whole new world upon a blank canvas, a world where they can, even just temporarily, submerge themselves into. A place where they dictate and recreate and become all that they hope to be. The boogie man kept at arm's length. Navigating through a maze of insecurities and self doubt. Fear is real.
But wait, wait a moment...wait a God damn fear filled moment; run and it will run right after you! Give chase and fear will devour the challenge, like a wild dog, run and it will chase. Stop and it may jump, attack and bite your head off. But just like a wild dog on the chase, if you suddenly stopped dead in your tracks and turned and looked that dog dead in the eye, it will stop in its tracks because it has no chase, no purpose, no sense in a nonsensical fight. And that dog, that wild dog, will yelp and snarl, and in its confusion will heel and tame. Fear is real, it is a primal instinct, a survival tool. Fear is real, but unfortunately in a made-up world like ours, fear is only ever owned by you, and only you can stop and stop it.
