The Beast of Fear

Fear is a primal survival mechanism for young people. It's been pervasively incorporated into our everyday lives at a cost to well-being. I've come to accept its squirming in my chest and belly, just feeling its restless contortions. Sometimes if I'm on a dark side street, it's walking right in the middle of the road, Egyptian style, to be exposed and visible,. even if the occasional car has to slow down to manoeuvre around me. So I tell the beast that lives in my belly, that most of the time I am safe, that yes, anything could happen. But my mum being killed by a stranger was a horrible anomaly in a world that