Warning, this one is really quite long.
Like, a whole 12 and a half minutes!
So please forgive my presumptive use of your time.
Anyhow, here it is :
I felt like the wind was blowing in the right direction for me to go for some serious catharsis so I gave it my best shot.
But there’s more. I need to go deeper. Deeper, and more raw and honest. I need to express some of the really deep and nasty stuff lurking deep in the pits and crevices of my soul, and that’s going to take some serious digging.
I’m up for it. I am way beyond giving a shit if it hurts or paints me in a bad light or otherwise is the sort of thing most people suppress.
Fuck that. I’m in it to release my demons and air out old wounds and excise the diseased and infected flesh underneath those wounds so I can dig out all the poison and then cleanse the wound and close it then put a nice clean bandage on it.
There is an exit for all my pent up emotions if I just keep digging and keep struggling with my bad side and keep opening myself up as much as I can.
I’ve been really exploring just how paranoid and mistrustful and closed off I have been.
Not without reason. I have been betrayed and hurt in terrible ways in the past. I can remember having some hope and joy and zest for life as late as junior high.
But then Heisler and I stopped being friends and I was all alone again and life became a long dull grey trudge from nowhere to nowhere as my body moved through the world but my soul stayed cooped up deep inside the icy fortress I’d created.
Not on purpose, mind you. But as an instinctive response to my increasingly cold and vacant world, I withdrew deeper and deeper into myself, and that left a lot of me behind as each time I withdrew deeper, I shrank.
I feel like for my whole life, I have been trying to keep warm with a blanket that is way too small for me, and desperately trying to squish all of myself under it anyway.
Dunno how to give myself a bigger blanket. Maybe by growing up. I have no idea.
And lord knows I am trying. Trying as hard as I can to rise and transcend and leave all my petty poisonous bullcrap behind. I know that I could be something truly amazing if I could only cut all this excess baggage weighing me down loose.
And maybe that’s what I’m afraid of and why I cling to this tortuous collection of old, old sin and bruises. I’m scared of what will happen when I finally get enough of my marbles together and rise to my true potential.
Or at least a financially successful portion thereof.
It’s fear of the unknown, and, I suppose, that fear that I might be powerful beyond the ability of my meager soul to control and as a result I would finally go insane.
Or transform into something entirely unrecognizable to my current self, which a fixed sense of self cannot help but view as death.
I completely lack the capacity to simply trust that whatever comes next will be a better version of me. I lack faith even in my own developmental potential.
So the idea of leveling up scares me because it’s like opening a door into the vast and sinister world of the Unknown.
And if it isn’t known, how can you possibly trust it?
More after the break.
Fear of the unknown
The irrationality really becomes evident when you realize that you instinctively assume that if something is unknown, that means it’s against you.
As if there was a pervasive force acting with malign intent dedicated to hurting you in all ways possible and the only way to be safe from it is to only go places and do things where you can know they are “safe”.
And like I have said before, there’s precious little in this chaotic universe that is like that. Everything worth doing has some degree of risk. Nothing is guaranteed. Life is a gamble and all we can do is play the odds.
And you have to ask yourself, “How small does a risk have to be before it is not worth considering?”. There’s all kinds of things that could happen to you. You might get hit by a door that fell off an airplane. You might get blown up by some psycho who is angry with your landlord. You might get electrocuted by a short circuit in the power bar you plug your computer into.
But all of those things are extremely unlikely, and therefore, not worth considering.
And yet, if you’re like me, you’re kind of worried about all three of those things now. Not because they are likely but because they feel more likely because I have put those images into your head, even though they are no more likely now than they were before I typed anything about them.
And the thing is, anyone with a little imagination (and maybe a morbid streak) can come up with thousands of other examples. All equally unlikely, all equally scary, and it’s mentally impossible to worry about all of them.
On some level, you have to work probability into your calculations. You have to be willing and able to override your emotional response and assert your right to not worry about things that will, in all probability, never ever ever happen to you.
At least, that’s the only way I know of to conquer those insidious fears.
And if you find yourself unable to do that, ask yourself this : Why is my mind fixated on this incredibly unlikely thing?
What am I avoiding by obsessing over it?
What does filling my mind with this push out of my mind?
And how bad must that thing be if being terrified of nothing seems better?
I will talk to you nice people again tomorrow.