Beyond the Dead End of Fear
It is July, and I am afraid to begin here, again.
I'm afraid of the pain and sorrow and grief I'm sure I'll find if I start close in. I'm afraid of all the pain I feel, of the tightness in between my shoulders. I'm afraid of going into the darkness. It feels so scary and so dark, and I'm afraid it will swallow me whole. I'm scared I'll get stuck there. I'm afraid I'm already stuck there.
I'm sad, and I want big things, and I also don't know what I want. I want to set down my pencil and stop writing. I don't want to know what's really here. So much pain and grief and fear and avoidance, and my body aches with holding it all in.
But I don't know how to get past this first layer of fear. It's like the door is locked tight on a vault filled with everything that ever threatened my safety, my okayness. To open it would be a grave mistake.
Inside, I can see the fear: that I've never changed, that I'm as wounded, broken, and damaged as I ever was. I'm afraid this current ebb is a sign that I've regressed, that I never make enough forward progress for it to stick, to make a difference. That no matter how hard I try, I always end up buried in the pain of my past, in the wreckage of my deepest wounds.
Have I done something wrong? Did I do enough? What if I do something wrong? What if someone sees me? Will they like me? Will they accept me? Will they hurt me? Will they reject me? Will my dreams ever come true?
I'm so afraid, and I'm so afraid of the fear its self. I want to ignore, push past, get over it. I want to leave these fears in the past, to erase them as if they never existed, so I can finally be free to do all the things I want to do so badly.
But I can't keep trying to rid myself of what I've lived through. And all the pain and all the fear is a part of me, just as all my lifetimes of experiences flow through the karma that ripens in the manifestation of this lifetime.
There is nothing wrong with me. There is nothing wrong with the fluid way my emotions carry me through time and space. There is nothing wrong with my fear, nothing wrong with my grief, nothing wrong with the part of me that is afraid of all of it.
Sweetheart, it is okay. Everything is welcome. All of you is welcome. Every single part, feeling, experience, desire, fear, sorrow, hope, dream, is welcome and loved and cherished.
Tell me, what do you want? What do you need? What do you wish for at the deepest place in you?
I wish for this: Hold me. Tell me everything will be okay. Tell me I didn't do anything wrong. I want to know if I'm okay. Tell me I'm not being silly. This too shall pass, and I can take my time. There's no rush.
I want to be seen, but I'm so afraid that being seen will lead to my worst fears. That I'll be caught doing something wrong, being too sure of myself, too confident, too selfish, too self-absorbed.
Look at her trying so hard. Everyone is laughing at her and talking about her, and she doesn't even know it. And she takes herself so seriously. And it's all fake, and she's fake. And she's faking all of it.
I want to be real and honest and open. And when I am, I feel an intense contraction, an overwhelming and crippling fear that letting my guard down like that will lead to my worst fears. That I won't be loved or embraced. That I'll be misunderstood, rejected, and ridiculed.
And it feels so deep and so intense, like I'm 16 years old again, and my whole world is disappearing just as I thought it was opening.
And deeper still, it feels beyond this lifetime. I feel the pain and grief and torture of all the women and humans who ever had something to share, a depth of love and healing and power and hope and creativity and magic, and who were rejected, abandoned, and burned alive for sharing their deepest, truest, freest selves.
I want to grow beyond this dead end, this waiting for the fear to no longer exist before risking sharing my open heart. I want to wrap the intensity of my love and compassion around all the versions of myself that were ever stopped, held back, or hidden by fear. And I want to extend my embrace around the fear of the fear itself.
I want to honor the fear as the great protector it was, always trying desperately to keep me from the pain it saw and knew so well. I want to set down the belief that there was ever anything wrong with the depth of my feeling. And I want to move forward with room for all of it, the fear, the joy, the pain, the love, and the unknown that awaits every next step and each breath.
Just as our deepest desires, hopes, dreams, and gifts were never meant to separate us, to lead us to the pain of rejection, so too our fear was never meant to be the dead end.
Fear is only as powerful as we let it be. And embracing the wholeness of ourselves requires getting intimately acquainted with our fears, not so they can stop us, but so they can be brought into the healing light of awareness, so they can be softened by the embrace of understanding.
