Fear With Legs

-
I've learned that it's easy to give fear legs. It starts as an idle thought. You know that teeny-tiny, itsy-bitsy thought that crosses your mind quickly and you think that once it's gone it's gone? But then it reappears later? Then again and again at random moments? And then it's all you can think about? You think and ruminate and analyze. Ultimately you find yourself losing sleep. And once you are sleep deprived, there's no stopping it. Your head aches and your stomach ties itself in knots. You keep thinking, ruminating, and analyzing. Your ideas grow potentially more and more irrational, but you're not sure exactly how irrational they are. Because you're so tired and you've thought about it so much that you can't quite distinguish between fact and fiction. What started out as intuition and an idle thought is now a dead certain reality. And otherwise known as "fear with legs".

Fear with legs is no good. It leads to all kinds of craziness. Whatever it is that you were trying to avoid (we usually try to avoid our fears, don't we?) is now on you like white on rice. You've opened the door and like an unwelcome guest that refuses to leave, it's here to stay. You started it and kept going and going and now you got it. Look out for the self-fulfilling prophecy. It'll be here before you know it. You didn't want it to happen so badly that you made it happen. Weird, isn't it? Yet entirely fool-proof. It happens every time. Time for a couple over-used quotes - "What you resist, persists" and my personal favorite, "thoughts become things".

The key then is to resist and to think about something else. Anything else, really. Happy thoughts are probably best. Why not give happy legs instead of fear? Because fear is so much easier. Yes, I know. I've lived this one time or two or three (OK, maybe more than that). I'm trying to do better these days. I fill my head with happy, confident, pleasant thoughts. It takes focus and effort to be happy, confident, and pleasant. All the time. And that's what it takes - constant vigilance against fear. Until happy has legs, then it's all good.

The depressive in me struggles with happy. I know I may seem like a happy person, but I'm not always as happy as I seem. My demons... They love me so. They love to poke, prod, and otherwise fuck with me. Happy keeps them at bay. Fear brings them out. This is why I try for happy. Everyday. And when I feel those fearful thoughts creeping in, I push them away and ignore them. I can't handle yet another fear-induced self-fulfilling prophecy. So I'm just not going to think that way. My demons can go to Hell for all I care. And stay there. I don't want them anymore.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

My Biggest Fan

-
It comes for all of us. If we're lucky. Right now, I'm not sure I feel lucky, but I know in the days, weeks, months, and years to come, I will come to realize that I am. Or I was. My parents are elderly, eighty-four and ninety-two. From where I'm sitting at the moment - my mother's hospital room - it's doubtful that my mom will reach tomorrow, much less eighty-five, So here I sit. And write...while  my biggest fan lays a few feet away snoring like a freight train. Her snores mean she's still alive so rather than drowning them out with music, I listen, Intently. Because each one could be her last. It's the drugs - her pain was pretty severe - making her sleep so soundly. These same drugs, the ones that keep the pain at bay, may also hasten her death. Her decision. She's been kicking cancer's a** for the past seven years. My mom's no sissy; she can endure. But this isn't the cancer, the known quantity. This is an aneurysm, a ticking time bomb...
Read more

Ironic, Actually

-
A couple days ago, I posted my first ever vlog. It was  just me reading an old blog from December 2018 called, "Courage, Actually." I chose it specifically because it's about accepting life's challenge and fearlessly stepping outside your comfort zone. Making and posting a video of myself was a big step outside my personal comfort zone - in fact, I have long said it's something I would never do - so I felt the topic was timely and appropriate. Reception of the vlog among my Facebook friends and followers was immediately positive. I breathed a huge sigh of relief. Courage for the win. I worry, though, that I have falsely painted myself as some courageous-comfort-zone-and-fear-defying crusader. In reality, that's just not me. Not these days...and I think it's time for me to come clean. It's kind of ironic, actually. And hard for me to admit. This might be the barest I have stripped myself in a long time. For the past few months, I have been mired in ...
Read more

Be That Person

-
 A friend texted me last night. Her almost twelve year old son is starting middle school today and she was more than a little stressed. I guess it's somewhat normal for parents to be nervous about such milestones in their children's lives. I mean sixth grade means a bigger school, perhaps switching classrooms, more complex homework assignments, etc, etc. I'm sure there's also some wistfulness about the whole thing. The "My baby's growing up" kinda thing. My friend's concerns last night (and again this morning) were far larger. You see, her son is different. He always has been. Not only is he on "the spectrum," he also has Tourettte's. And he's on the fringes of non-binary. Plus, he lives on the border of Texas and Arkansas in a place that is far from open-minded and falls just below marginally accepting. This is the land of conservative politics (ie Trump), gun rights, big religion, and the concomitant "family values" that i...
Read more