Valeria Troubina

Fear – we are programmed to feel it, in order to survive. This is an obvious and common sense understanding. On the other hand, fear is also a lived and cumulative experience, and if we look into the eyes of a new-born baby, the first thing we glimpse is probably fear. But what has a baby experienced? A previous death? Or something it already can’t remember? Or what did it encounter while outside corporeal existence? In any case, the experience is undoubtedly transcendental, its trace remaining in the unconscious of every individual being and more broadly that of the collective. Fear goes unnoticed and is intangible under normal conditions; it is a phantom, or a latent horror film that each person creates for himself, if he is not able to keep his mind under control.

Fear is therefore binary: it is there, but at the same time it doesn’t exist. It pops up like a Jack-in-the-box. This toy represents the essence of fear: as long as we don’t know what is there, we can’t be afraid; and as soon as we do know what is there, there is nothing to be afraid of either – we see a painted doll! But we are scared, and it is almost funny. Perhaps we are afraid of the unknown, or more likely it is the fear of death, the fear of nothingness veiled and deeply buried in our unconscious. Fear is an energy that preserves our existence and at the same time destroys the serenity of the psychic experience, something immaterial, but nevertheless tightly connected to our physical existence in this material world and in this body.

In contemporary society, death is a kind of taboo. It is not done to talk about it. It prevents us from enjoying life. But it is an inalienable fact. Everyone knows very well that they will die, but nobody wants to. And this is a big conflict in our consciousness. Although we see death everywhere we stubbornly turn away from it in disgust because it makes us suffer. And perhaps the highest degree of fear is caused not by death as a natural lawful process, but by violent death: a terrible injustice that takes away our very right to exist. It is impossible to cope with this fear or fight against it, it restrains and deprives the weak creature of will, and only the strong can sometimes resist it.

I experienced such fear for the first time in the summer of 2014.

I was picking raspberries in the garden of my house in Luhansk when the war in Donbas started. At first I didn’t even realise what was happening. Suddenly the air was filled with a monstrous sound. Everything suddenly began to vibrate and this thunder grew more and more until it turned into a terrible cutting whistle and I saw a shell pass over the roof of the house bending the trees. I didn’t even realise how I ran onto the porch scattering all the raspberries. Everything happened incredibly slowly, as if in slow motion. It seemed that my legs didn’t move as fast as they should. Running into the house I saw how everything jumped from the terrible explosion and rumbled, rattled and knocked, although the explosion happened quite far from the house and there was a ringing in my ears for a long time…. and shouting to my mum, ‘I’m OK’ I didn’t hear my voice or her answer to me …

At that moment I realised the horror of the destructive power of human anger and stupidity – and amazingly all fear disappeared. In its place there was something new: I don’t know, maybe a desire to survive, to fight, to defend myself, to withstand.

From that moment, a lot happened. All summer the city was bombed; there was no water, light, communication, normal food, no information … but no fear either. Or rather there was – because there was a realisation that it could strike at any moment – death would come suddenly. But paradoxically, fear even became a friend …

And now in 2024, I find myself in the same place, in a full-scale war, having lost my mother, many friends, and thousands and thousands of people I do not know, towns and villages wiped from the face of the earth, destroyed homes and destinies.

And worst of all, the fate of the whole world hanging by a thread. And now fear has been elevated to a new degree, it has become universal, but not everyone realises it yet. Perhaps the worst fear is madness: only a madman is capable of destroying everything around him and himself. Truly, he knows not what he is doing.