Mom I’m scared of everything how not to be scared ! I don’t know how not to be afraid, as a rule people go to the doctor for treatment, but I can’t, I’m afraid of doctors, I imagine them with a vicious look on their face holding a scalpel in their hand to cut me up. A few years ago I had a thrombosis and I had to have an injection every day for three weeks, the problem was that when the 
nurse came to my house to give me the first injection, it took three quarters of an hour before I agreed to be injected, it was comical and downright ridiculous, I was trembling with fear and my wife gave me her hand to encourage me while the nurse viciously pierced my callipyge with her needle. Even the simplest things like going to a restaurant can be complicated when there is something new. It was just recently during the vacations, I suggested to my wife to choose a restaurant where we had never been before, that day I had a kind of adrenaline rush, for her the idea of change was not a problem. Have you ever been to one of those places where there are lots of restaurants? When I arrived I realized that first of all there were a bunch of restaurants that we had never been to. Then I realized that for someone like me it was hard to make a choice, it was because I was scared and it was very difficult, especially when it was something new. Every time she told me we’re going there, I always found a good excuse to say no, it’s too expensive for what it is, there’s not enough people in that one, or not a good note on trip adviser. After having exhausted all the choices she offered me, I said to her with a little old monkey pout “you don’t like a good flammenküche, beer is unlimited on Thursday evening, you know? “With my wife it’s simple, she doesn’t need to talk to me, I can see right away in her head what she wants to tell me, and I tell her “Ok, I’m ready to make an exception for the Japanese, but look Chérie, we’re going to spend a fortune to eat some rice surrounded by seaweed leaves”. Finally, a true epicurean is not going to be satisfied with a few butchers of sushi, it’s a meal for a jockey, a hairdresser or an anorexic, by the way my grandmother used to say “an empty bag of potatoes doesn’t make sense”. Caught at my own game for having proposed to go to a restaurant where we had never been before, I am trembling with fear as if I was going to take a big leap into a sidereal void, worried about what I was going to discover. Once inside, fear gives way to apprehension, I don’t know any of the dishes on the menu, so I ask my wife to choose for the two of us, since I didn’t know yakitori even though it seemed like a chicken skewer.
When I’m scared and I don’t want to show it, then I change the subject ! I hear the server announcing “Have you chosen Mister and Lady? “My wife answers him not yet, but I was cooler since it was up to my wife to choose, so I say to the waiter “semi mesen nihongo Ga wakari maska ” I had learned Japanese when I was unemployed, to kill time and combine business with pleasure, I 
thought that maybe someone would offer me a job thanks to Japanese in second or third language, and he answers “No, we don’t have that on the menu”; I translate for those who have not yet learned Japanese that it means “Please, do you understand Japanese”; I assumed that someone who worked in a Japanese restaurant had to speak at least the minimum trade union language so I explain to him that I had learned Japanese alone when I was unemployed and that due to lack of practice I had forgotten almost everything. He asked me if I hadn’t found another way to torture myself. The conversation stopped as my wife announced that she had chosen, she was relieved to have cut off my conversation with the waiter before it became poisonous, like some fish you can find in sushi. Being convinced that learning a language and especially Japanese is not a way to torture oneself, my wife and I started a debate, and in my opinion working in Japanese without speaking the language seemed surprising, I wondered how he would serve if a Japanese man from Tokyo who didn’t speak French came to this restaurant to eat something that would remind him of his country. His answer was immediate “Ah, but there are pictures to choose from” while I was convinced that these pictures were there to help and reassure someone like me that if I order yakitoris I would find some kind of chicken skewers in my plate, these pictures are certainly not for a Japanese who would eat yakitori and all the dishes of his country.
I’m sorry but in order not to be too afraid of the unknown, I ask questions, it’s to annoy nobody but just to reassure me, besides, there’s something that’s not very reassuring while I think about it, why at the restaurant the men are always facing the wall while the women are sitting in front of the man certainly but especially in front of the world, it’s true that this is another debate
maybe for another article if you don’t mind. Here we are served, I must admit that there was a reasonable amount of preparation time between the moment we placed the order and the moment we were served. Because in some restaurants, 2 minutes after you place your order, even at Mc Do they are slower, it means a lot on their kitchen. Well it must also be said that the meal was very good, and beyond my expectations and hearty enough to fill my stomach, however the waiter kept asking me how to say that and how to say it in Japanese. This waiter was clever, in fact a few days later we went back to this Japanese but without the fear of the first time, and there we were received with honors by the waiter, he greeted us by saying “Ohio gosaimas” a word that I had taught him during our first visit which means hello with the polite formula, and we were more than well served. So I continued to teach this waiter lots of words in Japanese. As we had started to get friendly, I offered to teach him a phrase for flirting in Japanese and I said, “We say takatoukiter,” and he simply told me that he would try to say this to his Japanese colleague when she came back the next day to see his reaction. He believed me and I was ashamed, my wife resented me, but in my opinion if he hadn’t understood what it means to leave everything, I doubt his Japanese girlfriend would have understood better. We never went back to that restaurant again because we were afraid of my stupidity.
I never stop being afraid and it’s often because of my foolishness, could I stop my nonsense, is this the cure for not being afraid anymore, could I live with this evil, I look around and I see only 
people like me who are afraid, I am afraid that they don’t realize their fear, or maybe they have learned to live with it, what is this evil of living made of, are animals as afraid as we are or have they learned to live with them too, does fear serve to protect us from the unknown or to hurt us, should we go for it when it invades us like when I entered this Japanese restaurant. There are people who cultivate their fear, they have even made it their profession and their livelihood, what are they afraid of? Can we say that they have conquered their fear? If they use fear to exist, is it a profession for the future? If not, why are there more and more proselytizers who sow fear? Françoise Giroud, an intelligent, cultured, and strong woman, a woman with an unequalled destiny, was also afraid. She said, “For twenty years now, in France, we have turned our backs on hope and replaced it with fear. Fear of losing one’s job, fear of losing one’s social security coverage, fear of immigrants, fear of Le Pen, fear of Maastricht, fear of the globalization of the economy, fear for the children who will no longer know the social elevator, and all of this ends up turning to fear of living”.
In conclusion, what I can say is that it is true, we are afraid of everything, of being born, of growing up, of working, we are afraid of our father, of our school teacher, of the gendarmes, of justice. We are afraid for his family, for our parents and for our children, we are afraid of strangers and of those we don’t know, we are afraid to reach out, we never stop being afraid, until the day we die of fear. We do not take anything with us when we pass to the other world, behind us remain these memories for those who want to remember, they will say that it was someone good but who was afraid during his whole life without having overcome his fears . For this reason, I decided that from now on not to be afraid anymore and to throw myself into the void, maybe I would hurt myself and then maybe not, but the day I die people will write on my epitaph that I was a man who lived without fear and that it was a good life and in the end it is a well deserved rest. Mom I am afraid of everything how not to be afraid
I leave you with a big hug.
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