Living a Story

"All the darkness in the world cannot drown out the light of a single match."

The Function of Fear

Have you ever thought about what the function of fear is?  I’ve begun to think about it recently.  I’ve started thinking about it because I have this fear that I know is irrational.  I have this fear that I know is not grounded in truth.  And yet I can’t seem to let it go.  I can’t seem to move past it.  I can’t seem to convince myself that this thing I am so afraid of is not going to happen.  I’ve been frustrated with myself and I’ve been wondering why I can’t let this fear go.  Why I can’t call it out for what it is.  Why I’ve been latching on to it so tightly.  I think it’s because I feel like it is protecting me.  I think it’s because I feel like my fear is keeping the thing that I am so afraid of from happening.  It feels like my fear is a buffer.  It feels like if I let go of it then I will no longer have a buffer and I will no longer have protection.  Is this rational?  No.  But it feels true to me.  Can fear be protective?  I think the very nature of fear is to protect.  If you are crossing the street and a car is barreling towards you, fear is the thing that motivates you to jump out of the way.  If you are walking on the edge of a dangerously high cliff, fear is the thing that urges you to step back to safety.  If a malicious dog is charging you, fear is the thing that gets your ass moving.  So yes, fear is protective.  Fear can save your life.  But can this life saving fear be taken out of context and placed around something that is not actually threatening your life?  Yes.  I believe that is what is happening to me.  This thing I am so afraid of is not threatening my life even though it feels like it is.  The amount of fear I have towards it is not proportional to the fear it calls for.  But my brain is telling me it is protecting me.  My brain is telling me it is saving my life.  How do I argue with my brain that is ‘saving my life’?

I want to let this fear go.  I want to rest assured in the fact that I am safe and that no one is leaving.  But I cannot.  My fear has become a stumbling block.  Something that I cannot move past.  For who can let go of something that is ‘saving your life’?  All of my instincts are telling me that this fear is saving my life.  My ‘fight or flight’ reactions will not let me let it go.  How do you argue with something as instinctive as your fight or flight reaction, even if it is being taken out of context?  I have not figured this out yet.  I have not learned how to let this fear go or how to challenge the reactions that are coming from my fight or flight instincts.  It doesn’t feel right to challenge them.  How can fear save your life in one situation and in another scream danger when there is none?  How do you know when to listen to it?  How can it be taken that out of context?  How do I know when there is actually danger or when there is none?  My brain screams at the same intensity both times.  How do I know when to trust it?

I Fear Success

I am lovable.  I forget that sometimes.  I don’t feel lovable.  So how can it be true?  Am I worth loving?  Am I worth knowing? I struggle with self-hate.  Self-doubt.  I struggle with feeling like I am worth it.  I have believed for so long that I am not lovable and I am not worth it and it is very hard to change those beliefs.  I find that part of me actually resists changing those beliefs.  Part of me resists the truth.  The truth that I am loved.  That I am worth it.  That I am good.  I built my view of myself and the world around the lies that I am not lovable.  My entire belief system is constructed around this.  And now that it is being dismantled, now that I might be lovable, I am finding myself desperately searching for something familiar to hold on to.  If I truly am lovable then that changes everything.  That changes the way I see myself, other people, the world.  This is a good thing, I know, but I’m finding myself resisting it.  Because I am afraid of change.  I am afraid of my belief system being dismantled. I am afraid of who I will become.  What I could accomplish.  I could be successful.  I could achieve my dreams.  I could get married and have kids.  I could live a long, fulfilling life.  None of these things have seemed possible before.  When I used to think about the future it was always filled with darkness, hopelessness, and death.  Now when I think about the future it is filled with possibilities, hope.  These are good things, I know.  But the speed at which everything is changing is very overwhelming.  So I am finding myself desperately looking for something familiar to hold on to.  Something that will slow the process down.  Something that will help me feel like I have some control over all the change.  These familiar things are not good for me.  No, they are the opposite of what I really want.  But I have found myself turning back to them recently.  Trying to slow the process down.  Trying to feel in control.  What’s happening is that I’m really just feeling like shit.  Flirting with the things that once threatened my life in an attempt to feel in control.  I know how resist them.  I know how to get back on the path.  But I am afraid of where I am heading.  I am afraid of the success.

Turning the Light Off

Sometimes the moment I turn the light off to go to bed is the hardest part of my day.  Because it is then that I feel truly alone.  Alone with my thoughts.  Alone with my memories.  Alone with my feelings.  In the dark.  And I know that I will be alone in the dark for the next 6-8 hours.  When I turn the light off to go to bed I know that everyone around me will be going to bed soon too, if they haven’t already.  I know that there will be no one to text or call if I need something.  I know that finding things to distract myself from my overwhelming thoughts and feelings is a lot harder to do in the middle of the night than it is when the sun is out.  And as I lie there in the dark I start to become afraid of what will happen when I turn the light back on in the morning.  What will the day hold?  What unexpected things could happen?  Will I be ok?  Will I make it through the day to turn the light off again tomorrow night?

I lie there, snuggled under my covers, arms wrapped tightly around my pillow, grateful that I have made it through the day and also fearful that I won’t make it through the next.  Life and death are very real to me.  They become very real when you have spent years battling suicidal thoughts.  Although I have spent more nights than I can count hoping that I would not wake up in the morning, I now fear that I will not wake up in the morning.  I fear that I will close my eyes to go to sleep and that I will forever be lost in the darkness and loneliness.  So sometimes, turning the light off to go to bed is the hardest part of my day.  Will I make it to see the light again in the morning?  Will I survive the hours of darkness that I know lie ahead of me?

I have spent years feeling smothered by darkness.  Feeling a heavy cloud following me wherever I went.  I have since been learning how to free myself from this grip of darkness.  The heaviness has started to shift.  But every time I turn the light off I am afraid that I will get caught in its grip again.

I want to FEEL Loved

I’ve been realizing something.  I talk a lot about wishing I could feel the love that people have towards me.  I talk a lot about the sadness I’ve been feeling recently and how I am trying to allow myself to feel it.  Emotions are new to me.  They are something I disconnected from a very long time ago.  And as I am allowing them to come up they are very uncomfortable.  They are foreign to me.  Unfamiliar.  Scary.  It is hard to allow myself to feel them without running.  Hard to acknowledge that they are there.  I am afraid that if I let myself feel them I will become lost in them.  I am afraid they will take over my life.  It has been a risk trying to let myself feel again.  Anger is still terrifying to me but sadness, sadness I am trying to allow myself to feel.  Not all at once but in little moments here and there.

This morning I was feeling very frustrated with myself for doubting my friends’ love for me again.  There is evidence for it everywhere and still I question if it’s real.  But then I started thinking.  I want to FEEL loved.  How will I ever feel it if I continue to stay disconnected from my emotions?  I think feeling loved scares me more than feeling sad and even more than feeling angry.  It is so unfamiliar to me.  But just like I am starting to allow myself to feel sad in certain moments, I want to try to start allowing myself to feel loved.  Not all at once.  But maybe in little moments here and there.  Maybe, over time, I’ll start to become more comfortable with it.  Maybe I will start to believe that the love around me is real.  Authentic.  So I will start slowly.  A little bit at a time.  Trying to allow myself to feel the love that is around me.

There is Always a Way

What is it that I’m afraid of?  Oh, I’m afraid of many, many things.  I think, more than anything though, I am afraid of being alone.  I have this deep wound in my heart.  It goes all the way to the core of who I am.  I’m not sure exactly how this wound got there.  I think it slowly grew deeper and deeper as the years wore on.  One hurt piling on top of the next.  I didn’t know what to do with this hurt and so I pushed it deeper and deeper.  The result is that I have this all-encompassing wound that I am not sure what to do with.  My beliefs about myself come from this wound.  As well as my beliefs about other people and the world.  Beliefs that nothing is safe.  That I am unlovable.  That I am going to end up alone.  These things aren’t true.  And yet the pain from my past is so loud, making them seem true.  I felt alone as a child.  It felt like nothing was safe.  I felt like no one loved me.  And I have carried these thoughts and feelings with me into adulthood, even though I am safe now and loved now.  It seems that no matter how much evidence there is that people care about me now, I cannot believe it or accept it.  And so I am still feeling unloved.

What am I afraid of?  I am afraid that I will never be loved.  Or rather, that I will never FEEL loved.  How do I put my walls down?  How do I let their love in?  I haven’t figured this out yet.  What if I walk around for the rest of my life feeling unloved because I do not know how to accept the love of those around me?  These are the questions that haunt me.

There is a way.  There is always a way.  I will figure it out.  I will learn how to love myself.  I will learn how to put my walls down.  To let them in.  I am brave.  I am strong.  I will keep going.  There is always a way.