I’m back in the green place with the cool mountain water on my feet. But it doesn’t want to hold. I look up and the mountains aren’t there. Instead, I see rice paddies, though I feel like my spot along the riverbank is the same as it has been the last two times.

I ask whoever wants to show up to show up, and let them know I’m willing to listen.

Fear shows up wearing the face of someone I know. I ask Fear to change its visage so I can converse with it. She morphs into a woman with long blonde hair parted down the middle, wearing a headband. She reminds me of yet someone else, so I ask her if she can change her visage again. She complies, and now she is wearing a flowery frock.  

Are you from here?

I want her to answer that she is not, but it’s my voice I hear, not hers. I will be patient for her honest answer, not the one I expect her to give, just because she’s a different ethnicity than the characters I’ve encountered here before.

She seems calm, though she came to me as an incarnation of Fear. I still feel the echo of the friend I am irritated with.

I breathe. I wait. If she wants to talk, she will. I don’t want to push this conversation. I know how that feels.

I promise, I am listening. I will listen. Are you Fear? Are you … afraid?

I —

— she begins, but again, my words are interfering with her voice.

I think she wants to say that she is JUST A DIFFERENT VIEWPOINT, but I am not sure.

Are you saying that Fear is just a different viewpoint?

She says nothing. I guess I am answering my own question. 

Or is that just where I find my greatest fears, in different viewpoints?

Why am I asking her? I’m the one who knows myself. 

Are you afraid of yourself?

I don’t know why I ask this. 

She’s still quiet. I try to feel the water on my feet, the cold, clear water, and remember that I have time. Neither one of us is in a rush.

She has been walking near me, around me, not with any deliberate path, or purpose, maybe like a cat, circling me without circling me, letting me know she is there. Like a spirit creature. 

Fear is always with me, circling me, I tell her.

If she is Fear, then she already knows this.

I am anxious. I don’t want to miss the wisdom she has to share with me. Maybe this means I’m not ready. Or she is not ready.

Again, I think of my friend. Is it my fault that I haven’t fully let go of the outer world to come to this one? Maybe because I am new at this, or maybe it serves a purpose. 

The water. The water. I return to the relief of the water. I splish. I had forgotten to splish. It’s important to splish, to remember to play. My butt is uncomfortable. I ran out of the correct clothing for this journey.

Maybe this is all I need today.

That Fear is a different viewpoint.

Do you have any suggestions for me, before I return to the outer world? Something that will help me when people come at me with words I don’t want to hear, emotions I don’t want to deal with? 

Uh-oh, now she is veering into reminding me of another person from the outer world. I ask her to mind her fashion-plate presentation. 

Be here with me, I say. 

But I am the one that keeps slipping away.

She sits next to me. Her feet are tucked under her. 

I don’t understand why you are so calm. Are you not Fear?

More silence. Maybe the message I’m meant to get is that what I experience as Fear is Truth from another angle. Or Strength. Or … Acceptance. Perhaps Fear in the outer world becomes Acceptance, Strength and Truth in this one.

I don’t know. And now I realize I am hungry.

I am also curious. I have been conversing with myself, but she doesn’t contradict anything I’ve come away with. 

I hope you will come back and let me hear your story. I wonder if you know the little girl, and the woman, who may or may not be her mother.

I want her to smile. Maybe she does.