Fear & Train Tracks

You stand overlooking the train tracks. A bridge sits before you with shallow water flowing far beneath. Before the fear can take hold of you, you take your first step across the tracks. There is no rail to grab onto if your balance is lost. Just you, the tracks beneath your feet, and the wind billowing past you threatening to push you over the edge.

Fear enters your mind as you take your first few steps. With the fear comes an orange haze blocking your vision. If you look ahead, you cannot see where you step and risk falling. If you look down, you see how far down the ground really is and you grow dizzy. Your head spins. No matter where you look, the orange haze continues to fog your mind and the fear grows ever on. One foot in front of the other, choosing to look down at where you place your feet, you trek onward. 

Halfway across the bridge, you realize that it is not as bad as it was in the beginning. The orange haze of fear starts to lose its grasp on your mind. You begin to see other colors. The blue of the sky. The specks of green in the trees. The colorful graffiti that paints the tracks. Crossing the distance up in the air, you take back control of the fear. Although your fear continues to grow, you are able to keep it at bay as you see the colorful world around you at the heights of your adventure. 

As you approach the end of the bridge, back to solid land, you begin to see more color than you could see before. You see rainbows where once lay only an orange haze. The fear is kept locked away as you reach the end. You place your feet on solid ground and look back at what you have just accomplished. You, with your intense fear of heights, crossed over the train tracks with nothing below you. You think back on what could have happened if you were to fall. Those dark thoughts seem like nothing as you stare on at the colors that surround you. You see every color as the original fear slips away into nothing.

Yesterday I did what I never thought I would do. I walked across a bridge with nothing but train tracks. (See the picture below)

I have a fear of heights so it was borderline traumatizing for me to do. It was spur of the moment and it was quite a long bridge (or at least I thought it was with my fear making it scarier than it actually was) with nothing but a long drop beneath it. I suppose fear is something that is a bit trivial. If you let it control you, you never really get to experience anything. But, if you face it, you can do the unthinkable. Sure it is terrifying to do something you are afraid of, but once you do it you have both experienced something new and faced your fears. However, facing your fears does not necessarily mean that you overcome them. I faced my fear of heights and did what I will never do again. I am still afraid of heights, and I don't think that it is something I will ever get rid of. At least I can say that I did what I did. It was an experience, and I'm glad I did something new for me.