Obsessed with flying: I used to tell my teenage friend in Beirut, “One day, we will fly.” I didn’t know what it meant exactly then. But at the time, most of my lucid dreams involved me flying, most of my poems described a feeling of floating, and I had a recurrent sensation of leaving my body and flying away. One day, we will fly, I told myself and imagined telling it to every one of my close friends. That was a long time ago.
Obsessed with fear: I don’t share this a lot but I used to suffer from panic attacks, in fact, about 12 years ago, I was diagnosed with panic disorder. It started when I moved to Saudi Arabia, to follow the man I loved. Although I had lived with many fears up till that point, that period of my life was when all my fears manifested at the same time. My system collapsed. I was close to committing suicide. Mental health was still taboo in the Arab world and it still is to a certain extent, psychotherapists were under-skilled, I was unaware of what a body can do. My fear became so bad that I was fearing fear itself. I feared this sentence of a diagnosis. Little did I know that it was all conditional. After a lot of self-initiated research, and a long journey into self-awareness, I started to get better. I quit the pills that I was prescribed and felt tremendous power from reading science and particularly learning about neuro-plasticity. I was not condemned to live with an illness the way I was told, I wouldn’t have to carry the gene forever the way I imagined. On top of that, my attacks were conditional. They disappeared when I left Saudi Arabia. But still, I had many fears to face.
Obsessed with courage: 9 years ago, I lived alone for the first time in my life. I needed to face my fears on my own. I remember the first time I slept in my own house, alone in my bed, I was filled with a lot of anxiety. My mind started playing me all kinds of tricks. And then it hit me. I told myself, “Are you going to focus on those what-ifs that are racing in your imagination? Can’t you see they’re all in your mind? Just as you make them up, you can stop them too.” And that was it. The fear of being alone was conquered once and for all. But that was a minor fear of living alone, at the end of the day, I was still not truly alone, I was in a long distance relationship and still very attached to my family and friends. I didn’t know that my next journey would involve the primordial fear, the one that requires the most patience and inner strength. But until that major journey manifested, I went through a series of successes. See, I almost hunted my fears. The more something scared me, the more I went after it and stared it in the eyes, until it became dust. And then the big one came. The new and last fear that I was left to face was the fear of the inner lone wolf that I carried since childhood, the one that looked through my eyes and mirrored my darkest shadows.
Obsessed with fearlessness: A few months ago, it all became clear to me. I could not silence that voice anymore. I was ready. I followed my intuition. I cut the umbilical cord, cut the societal ties, cut the bullshit, the pleasing, the lying to myself. I become full unto myself and gathered a trust in the universe that I never had before. I felt a strong conviction that things are the way they need to be and I will be safe forever. Some of my oldest traps dissolved.
Today, I can face my darkest darks and heal my deepest wounds. I am fearless, I am courage itself. I am good because I am curious and in awe. Now I know what I meant when I said that phrase to my friend, “One day, we will fly”, and I don’t have to say it anymore. Today, I’m flying, and will keep flying. One day, we will fly higher and higher. But today, I fly.