I must say a word about fear. It is life's only true opponent. Only fear can defeat life. It is a clever, treacherous adversary, how well I know. Fear has no decency, respects no law or convention, shows no mercy. It goes for your weakest spot, which it finds with unerring ease. It begins in your mind, always. One moment I am feeling calm, self-possessed, happy. Then fear, disguised in the garb of mild-mannered doubt, slips into my mind like a spy. Doubt meets disbelief and disbelief tries to push it out. But disbelief is a poorly armed foot soldier. Doubt does away with it with little trouble. I become anxious. Then reason comes to do battle for me. I am reassured. But, to my amazement, despite superior tactics and a number of undeniable victories, reason is laid low. I feel myself weakening, wavering. My anxiety becomes dread.

Fear next turns fully to my body, which is already aware that something terribly wrong is going on. Already my lungs have flown away like a bird and my guts have slithered away like a snake. My ears go deaf. My muscles begin to shiver as if they had malaria and my knees shake as though they were dancing. My heart strains too hard, while my sphincter relaxes too much. And so with the rest of my body. Every part of me, in the manner most suited to it, falls apart. Only my eyes work well. They always pay proper attention to fear.

So quickly I make rash decisions. I dismiss my last allies: hope and trust. Now, I have defeated myself. Fear, which is but an impression, has triumphed over me.

This matter is difficult to put into words. For fear, real fear, such as the kind that shakes you to your foundation, nestles in your memory like a gangrene: it seeks to rot everything, even the words with which to speak of it. So I must fight hard to express it. I must fight hard to shine the light of words upon it. Because if I don't, if my fear becomes a wordless darkness that I avoid, perhaps even manage to forget, I open myself to further attacks of fear because I never truly fought the opponent who defeated me.

My fear is love.