Fear and Guilt

Fear and guilt, two of the most debilitating emotions.

I had a conversation about a month ago with an old friend. Someone who's known me forever. I confided in her my great fear and my guilty dillema. She had some great advice, she said if you have a fear, its just that a fear. For (hypothetical) instance, if your fear is of being stalked by a man with a gun, well that's the fear of a lot of people and you just have to deal with it. BUT if you have such a fear, and suddenly you ARE being stalked by a man with a gun, then its no longer a fear you can just live with, you need to act.

This brought us to my guily dilema. How do I act, when the very action I must take, causes me great guilt?

She said guilt is something we manifest from the inside, the fear you have is being triggered from an external source. Take care of the fear, and deal with your guilt.

Well it wasn't exactly a road map, but it was helpful to hear someone who knows me and is somewhat aware of my fragmented history, take me seriously and without patronizing me, mirror back what I know in my heart of hearts to be true.

So the next day, I took a plunge. I faced something that I have been afraid of for most of my life. My anxiety. I've lived with it longer than I've known what to call it. My fear, I had to deal with my fear. I began a course of anti anxieties.

My fear isn't completely evaporated, but it has a looser grip on me. I've been sleeping through the night for the first time in memory. I've been waking up peaceful more often than not, and I am better equipped to deal with small grievances than ever before.

Without the overwhelming fear that causes me to look for a blinking neon exit sign, I am better able to stand my ground. I can begin to act, and I can have faith that my actions will heal, rather than harm and voila, I'm no longer faced with such a black and white dillema. I realize I have more than the two options I could first envision; remaining frozen and in place, or extricating myself completely from the few remaining ties I have to this world and going on the run.

Like M.I.A. "I've got my own goal, I just stand in one place and make sure I hit the ball, I'm a raging bull, a rebel, that's why I don't run for the sake of having fun."