Fear is Invisible to Me: A Guest Post by Youngmi Mayer
With the gift of knowing how to make people laugh, you have to know how to distract them from grief — something comedian and author Youngmi Mayer is all too familiar with. Read on for Youngmi’s exclusive guest post on what it means to be afraid and what she learned about herself after writing I’m Laughing Because I’m Crying.
I'm Laughing Because I'm Crying: A Memoir
I'm Laughing Because I'm Crying: A Memoir
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With laughter comes reflecton, and with wit comes wisdom. This is a breathtaking memoir from a celebrated comedian on the dualities of life, love and happiness.
With laughter comes reflecton, and with wit comes wisdom. This is a breathtaking memoir from a celebrated comedian on the dualities of life, love and happiness.
Fear is invisible to me. I’ve had this issue my entire life. I believe it originated when I was a child, and I was left alone for too long. To survive, I had to pretend I wasn’t afraid. I pretended so long that eventually I became unable to actually feel it. That doesn’t mean the fear went away, it means it became a vague pressure that I no longer had a name for. Even now as an adult, I will feel an abstract heaviness that I can’t put a finger on for days until realizing I feel afraid. Then I will have to actively try to find the source of my fear. Last month it was the realization that I didn’t have enough money for rent and it was already the 5th. It took five whole days of living in terror for me to see it.
People keep telling me that I am brave for writing I’m Laughing Because I’m Crying. At first, I didn’t understand what they meant. They say brave people aren’t people who aren’t afraid but are people who still do the thing that scares them, despite being afraid. However, am I being brave when I don’t even know that I am afraid?
I am not someone who is brave; I am someone who is unaware that they are afraid. Only after I’ve done the act does the fear crystalize. It took me months after finishing this book to realize I had been unwell during the year while I was writing it. I was in a state of panic and unease invisible to me until I was out of it. Then it came crashing down all around like an avalanche. I realized much too late that I was afraid, and I am unsure that if I was able to feel the fear, I would have been able to write this book. I am terrified now because I realize what I have done: a brave thing.
