Cliché supreme

The only thing you have to fear, is fear itself.

Trite but true. Whether it's spiders, losing those you love, diving, performance anxiety, cocktails, financial security, death or making a fool of yourself. It takes years off your life. Moments that will never happen again, ones you can never get another stab at.

The receptionist is baffled at my request for a medical certificate. I run through the now I'm forty patter again, this time more explicitly, careful to exclude mentally fit from the roster. She dubiously suggests I see the doctor, and finds me a slot on Friday morning. "Are you sure you want to go sky diving?", she asks triggering off my sniggers. We both dissolve into mirth and she can't wait to see me, Friday.

Still sniggering, the absurdity of it all strikes me. While fear is bound to be relative, my fears are positively incongruous. Ok, so fear is a strong word. Trepidation. Unease. Discomfort. Consternation. Deep dislike. You name it, I'll find a word for it. Social gatherings involving vast quantities of strangers. I like strangers just fine one on one. Even a bunch is fine. But send me to a 'networking' cocktail opportunity, christening at church, a social soirée dominated by small talk and my molars start grinding with alacrity, sending a spasm of pain up my temples. Do I do it? Yes. With the utmost of reluctance. Wrap a cord around my ankles and push me over. Stick me on a speedboat that flips over. Drape a python, krait and four other snakes over me and walk away. Lock me up in the womb of a pyramid. Weigh me down with cast iron and pull me under. Get me to walk around a flower show with blinking windmills on my head. Tell me I'm dying. Hell, tell me you're dying....

I'm not entirely socially inept. I just dislike having to overcome the deep rooted diffidence that has always plagued me. Please, please don't make me walk up, introduce myself and start chatting to strangers. I will grit my teeth and do it. Inhale. Exhale. Deeeeefly. Nope, the knot as big as a fist in my stomach only tightens with anxiety. As with everything, it's the spectre of fear which is paralysing. The actual event and fallout is never as bad as your imagination can paint it. I'll risk the physical, emotional, financial, social, spiritual, corporeal, multi dimensional, and even the unknown. I will take on the world and any marauding aliens. Just not at the christening....