Fear

Fear-Real and Imagined

Lately I've been consumed by this strange fear of everything and everyone.

The pandemic, struggling through and surviving a horrible illness, loneliness, guilt, emotional abuse , confined spaces, the realization that no one really understands what you're going through.

Being female and single and owning property in a patriarchal, largely misogynistic country.

That one wrong move or sign and you'd be seen as easy, ready to be taken advantage of,

Of really having no one to talk to.

Of being with someone because you are scared to be alone.

My self respect and confidence have been destroyed. 

I am sensitive to criticism.

I cry for everything.

I am scared to go back.

I don't have a place to call home. 

I wake up at nights sweating. I dream of painless death.

A fall into the abyss.