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.