The Day I Overcame My Greatest Fear
Everyone’s greatest challenge in life is overcoming their own fears. That thought or idea that loops around a person’s head to scare them is what keeps them awake at night, preventing them from enjoying the morning after. In some cases, a person will overcome their fear, and when they do, they become limitless during that bright defying moment in time. The darkness that lurked around them before becomes a dying shadow in their light. In the last 18 years of my life, I’ve had many fears and horrors. Many of these fears I have conquered, while very few still breathe down my shoulder at night. There is one fear, however, that I overcame which put many of my fears to rest all at once. This fear involved the life and death of my loved uncle.
As a kid, anyone can get scared in the most obvious situations. In a dark room, the creeks that come from behind the closed closet doors, or the horror movie that a child watches and within seconds, runs away into their parents’ room to sleep with them for the night. My greatest fear, however, arose in a hospital, with bright lights and machines beeping from every room, and my whole family surrounding one another. My uncle had been in the hospital for about a week. He was sick from all the medicine they gave him to relieve the pain of the surgery done on his leg. We were all wearing blue latex gloves and hospital gowns to prevent my uncle from suffering anymore infections. Everyone knew there was a chance he might not make it through the operation, but like any good loving family members, we all hoped for the best. That night, we got our hopes up a little too high.
My uncle was there since the very beginning, before I was even born. He was there to put my dad on top of his shoulders when he was only a few years old. The first time I sat on my Uncle’s shoulders was at Disneyland where I thought I was the only one who ever enjoyed the great heights that my uncle brought me to. Until that night in the hospital, I never saw my own father so broken. It was hard to look at any of my family that day. The worse had come when the doctor walked into the room, suggesting that the best thing to do now is make my uncle comfortable. Swimming in our own tears, we did just that.
We watched as my uncle calmly passed away. After that night, any dark room was a joke, the creeks in the closet felt like child’s play, and any horror movie was like watching Sesame Street. I was too upset to be afraid of anything. At this point, nothing can really scare me now. I have my uncle to thank for that.
I’m going to college after high school. It’s going to happen. No ACT score’s going to stop me, no GPA, and certainly no class rank. Whether any administrator likes it or not, I’m getting a dorm and overpriced books so I can study the major people keep telling me I might not succeed in. The voices and opinions of those who think I lack success are now muted in my mind. Because if there is a possibility that my Uncle somehow ever returned, I know he wouldn’t want to see his nephew crying in the dark. He’d want to see me become a light that inspires all and rids the world of the darkness it’s currently in. That’s exactly what I intend on being after college.
