She trembled a little as she looked at the small, clear blue disk on the tip of her finger. She blinked hard. Then, one more time, she pulled back her eyelids and carefully positioned the contact onto, hopefully this time, and yes… placed the contact in her eye. She jumped a little, and her eyelid fluttered, protesting the foreign object that now resided on her eyeball. The contacts, hopefully, will help her vision from deteriorating as much as mine did (I am so nearsighted that I cannot even get Lasik), so there is a long term goal that transends the simple desire to not wear glasses.

It had taken my daughter nearly an hour to do something that had never been hard for me to do. It was frustrating to watch, and I’m sure even more to experience. But she persisted, always trying again after the numerous failures. The words “I can’t,” never crossed her lips. She had wanted this for a long time, and would do it despite the anxiety. It would be even worse if I did it for her, she informed me.

After the ordeal for the second night in a row, she made the comment that even though it was hard, she felt that if she could over come this [not so] little fear, it would help her overcome the hard things when she was older.

I am in awe. She is only just shy of 11 years.

Contrast this to the poor soul I recently witnessed on TV. At 627 pounds, Jackie desperately wanted to have gastric bypass surgery so that she could lose weight. She also had what she had thought was a hernia, but was in fact a large deposit of fat that accumulated from her having laid on her side for too many years.

At some point, this woman was walking around. There are videos of her at a healthy weight. What made her lie down and not get up ever again?

As they tried to get her into the car to transport her to the hospital where she would get the surgery she had finally found someone to do for her, my question was answered. It was clear that it would be a tight squeeze, getting into the car, but it was doable, at least from my perspective. But suddenly, and in front of the camera, she began to cry, “Oh, I can’t, I CAN’T! Oh no. No, I can’t do this. I just can’t.”

Could she control that part in her that feared whatever it was she feared? Just because I can control it easily, that doesn’t mean I should judge her because she can’t. And yet… I find myself getting frustrated and disgusted. It doesn’t have to be that way, I want to tell the woman through the screen. YOU don’t have to be that way. Just… just let the fear go and do it. You will be happier. I promise.

But she can’t hear me. And even if I stood in front of her, just like her friends were doing, and told her that she could do it, that there was really nothing to fear in getting in the car (That surgery, on the other hand… but that is a topic for another post), that it would all be okay, she wouldn’t believe me.

It is like watching the bird trapped in the room who won’t fly out of the window you have opened up for it.

And then what about my daughter, who has described her anxiety as almost like an invisible force keeping her from placing her contacts in. What is it that makes her so sensitive? And what is it that makes her so determined to overcome it?