Noticing the fear.

Limes from our tree :)

I have been pretty engrossed in a couple of assignments for that last few days, and that won't lift for another couple. I suddenly realised that I hadn't planned anything for tomorrow's blog post and I wondered what to post. (Oddly enough, now I am posting early instead of not posting at all. Weird.)

I do have plans for a few book reviews and some tea reviews soon, but for now I might just continue with my personal musings until I have the time to dedicate to that.

In the spirit of sharing what I was talking about with my Fear post a week ago, I wrote something a few days ago (originally to myself, to understand what was going on) that I'd like to share here.

I would like to say first, though, that I am not looking for advice in this matter. I am merely sharing it in the hopes that I can reach out to people, and also to understand myself a little better. I will endeavour not to make excuses for myself in this, but I only want supportive comments, or no comments at all. Please respect my wishes. :)

Without further ado...

I have established within myself over the past couple of days a resolution to deal with something that I have been fearful of for some time. Perhaps years now.

After finally receiving some sort of diagnosis that I was, indeed, sick - chronically so - and that there was a chance I might not get better, I did my best to reconcile my expectations of my life and to move forward in the only way I knew how. By accepting who I was, who I had become, and what that might mean for the future. I seem to recall finding that difficult, but I can't really bring the sensation to mind immediately. I believe a lot of the discomfort came from outside expectations of me hitting up against my acceptance of my - for wont of a better word - fate.

It seems that I sentenced myself to living the best way I knew how - by removing myself from the outside world. To an extent. There were (and still are) always parts of me that became crabby and antsy and grumpy with this turn of events, but any suggestion of 'getting better' or finding a 'cure' were met with an overwhelming rise of rejection and (now that I recognise it) fear within me. Getting better meant a lot of things that I was not prepared to deal with, as much as I had dreamed I was a mentally healthy person.

Getting better... what does that idea mean to me? Why does it stir such feelings of discomfort and dislike within me? By all accounts, I should WANT to be rid of these pains, discomforts. The nausea, the body aches, the headaches, the stomach aches, the concentration disturbances, the visual issues, the failing immune system.

I guess, somewhere along the road, getting better meant things like the following: having to get a full-time job, having to work until I fell over, having to go back into the outside world and try to make friends, to deal with other people, facing up to the political climate in the world (and the issues relating to climate change), dealing with the idea that I may fail at what I've dreamt of doing all my life - write.

As much as I subconsciously fought it, the outside world kept seeping in at the cracks, like a cartoon where the main character tries to block the holes in a sinking ship. The outside world cannot be kept out. It came in through the small group of people I saw, the television I watched, the books I read, and, of course, my uni degrees. My ill health helped me to realise lots of things about my unhealthy attachment styles, my issues of wanting to please everybody at the expense of my own personality, and what I truly wanted to do with my life.

I have realised lately that getting better doesn't have to mean all those things sweeping in - I don't HAVE to get a full-time job [there are always other ways], and I don't have to be anything other than myself. And in terms of failing at being a writer? I'm not going down without a fight.

So, I guess that this all really comes down to fear of failure. Fear of not being able to make it in the real world. And that has made it difficult for me to picture myself as healthy. But it's getting easier. I gave my fears time to rise to the surface, and they are fears I have seen before in so many other people, and in myself before. So the next thing that I'm going to do? Believe in myself. Work smart (not hard). Take each day step-by-step. Lean in to my safety net of lovely people. And remember to breathe.

4 comments emotions, inspiration, musings, thoughts