Fear is something that we all must face at some point in our lives. It is a gruesome feeling, one that we dread before it even manifests. While some of us may have some different fears due to our various upbringings and encounters with life, many of us – in our current living situations – fear for our academic achievement, the uncertainty of our futures, or even our development into ourselves as individuals separated from the comfort of our family, our friends and our romantic relationships.

Fear, however, is also something that you can get accustomed to. Since I was 12 years old, I’ve come face-to-face with real fear in many of its forms. I lost my father – he’s alive, it’s complicated –, I’ve watched my mother struggle with a disease that no one should ever have to deal with, I’ve gone more days than I am willing to recount without running water or electricity, I’ve looked down the barrel of a 51mm at another (too) young man fearfully doing the same, and have been diagnosed with what I irrationally see as a ticking-time-bomb in my chest. That last one, however, seemed to be the final straw.

While I cannot pretend not to be anxious about living with my condition, I have lost the fear that it should have been accompanied with. I grew so tired of being afraid of my own mortality, that I just stopped doing it altogether. I started making jokes regarding my chest – that some may not appreciate – and adopting a somewhat happy-go-lucky attitude about it that seemed to enslave me emotionally in and of itself. In my mind, it was easier to just change my mindset as an individual than accept the fear that should have come with my condition. I went from a 14-year-old visionary that planned out – and looked forward to – his future to a ‘T’, to a cynical 21-year-old that decided to live one day at a time to fool himself into believing the future wasn’t necessary for happiness. Eventually, with practice, it worked; fear numbed away and dissipated. Until now.

There is nothing more fear-inducing – at least in my current frame of mind – than finding something, or someone, you don’t want to lose. Unfortunately for my until-now well-honed cynical point of view, I’ve recently realized one of those people has made their way into my life with an unexpected vehemence. I can honestly say, without a single shred of doubt, that I’m as afraid now as with any of the experiences mentioned above. Simultaneously however, I have never felt such happiness accompanying my fear. Yes, the new-found thought of a future absent of someone you don’t want to lose can be quite nauseating. After all, we’re only human. We want things to go our way constantly, and any forks or bumps in the road can cause us to feel confused and uncertain. At the same time however, the mere existence of someone that makes you feel that way to begin with is enough to change your outlook on life. For me, specifically, it’s pushed me to abandon my near-sighted view on life and to – for the first time in a long time – look forward to the future.

Please don’t get me wrong, I have not spontaneously turned into a person subscribing to a Disney way of thinking about life. We all know by now that things don’t always turn up how we want them to, regardless of how hard we try. People fight or drift apart over time and are sometimes just not as compatible as they thought they were in the first place. However, if I personally am convinced even for a second that someone might truly be worth the fear and the uncertainty that comes with fully giving myself over to them, it’s worth doing your best to see it through, regardless of the difficulty of the path or the eventual outcome.

I’m writing most of this blog sitting in a hospital waiting room, in between tests that my doctor suggested I must get done before I take the plunge to get elective aortic root surgery. Usually surgery for an aortic root aneurysm is not recommended unless necessary. With a 3% mortality rate during surgery, and a 10.9% mortality rate in the year after, it’s generally recommended to only undergo surgery when living with it becomes more dangerous than the procedure.

The idea of a surgery like that by itself is extremely scary, which is why my blog-post may be somewhat incoherent in nature. However, I realized three days ago that what scares me even more is the idea of fighting for the chance to grow closer to someone I absolutely love – and want to spend a very long time with – only to lose them prematurely.

As I sit here with heart palpitations on full throttle juxtaposed with the most unrelenting of smiles on my face, I think that just this once, it might turn out okay to let myself think this way.