I remember the tears as they slid down my face. I remember the cramping in my hand, as I held onto my dad, knuckles white as I cowered behind him. I remember the fear being shoved down my throat as it cut off my airways. I let it take root inside me. It was so powerful that at points I became convinced that death would be a more appealing alternative to this feeling that held me prisoner. All I could hear was my ragged breath, gasping for air in staggering and irregular intervals. I remember the demon as it slithered out of its cage and into the murmuring and rustling crowd.

When I was 10, my best friend Ava had a zoo themed birthday party at an ice cream place down the street. A middle­aged man with a scruffy brown beard stood in the center of a circle of restless and eager children, awe struck with wonder and curiosity. He showed us beautiful, exotic birds, delicate spiders, and adorable, playful monkeys. Soon, however, he stuck both hands into a large wooden box and picked out an ominous and abominable slime green creature that snarled its body around the burly man holding it. Its enormous size made the man appear meekly, weak, and unnaturally small. He passed the python around, letting children touch and hold it, confidently man­handling a spawn of the Devil. I’ve been deathly afraid of snakes all my life. To this day, I am unable to even look at a photograph of a snake without wanting to throw up, and yet when a real snake was before me, I couldn’t look away. That day I did something that still perplexes me with thoughts of its peculiarity, something I simply cannot find the right words to explain. Without reason, without thought, I stuck out my tiny trembling 10­year­old hand and I touched the snake.

The greatest lesson I have ever learned was taught to me by my fourth grade self...and that is that fear is not real. Instead, fear serves as mankind's most deadly disease. Living within the darkest crevices of our own minds, its very existence is defined and restricted by our will. Although the power of fear expands and feeds on our permission and submission, it can also be overcome by courage.

When I touched the snake, I realized that perhaps I didn’t fear the snake at all; perhaps what scared me the most was feeling afraid. As I wrestled with this notion, it quickly became clear that fear really is entirely, utterly, and completely abstract. We fear fear. In self defense, we humans have developed this inherent ability to assign fear to a certain physical object, or circumstance, bringing life to the darkness that swims inside our head. It brings us comfort to give fear a shape; by attaching an identity to fear, we give ourselves security with the knowledge that we can then avoid it at all costs.
 

It's rather curious how fear, a mere emotion, can unravel the mind the way a loose thread rapidly unravels the fabric of your favorite sweater with only the slightest pull. To evade our fears, we often cloak them in darkness and stick them under the bed with all the other monsters. But fear is just that, a conceptual ghost crafted by our imagination. We should not allow ourselves to be perpetually suspended by fear because fear itself lacks substance. Fear is not, and will never be, real. After all, the monsters that lived under your bed never once came out and seized your body in your sleep. If I have learned anything from my 10­-year­-old self it is that you got to find your snake. So tell me, what is your snake? Find it, and go touch it.