Scary Obsessions

I guess I posted this a couple of years back. I’m guessing that at the time it was probably aimed toward the Great Divide. Lot of good that did, clearly…

Today, it feels a little different, a little more personal. Sometimes this shit we hate that scares us has nothing to do with anything happening out in the world. Or maybe what’s happening in the world is a reflection of what’s happening within us.

It makes sense. Hurt people do fucked up things to other people, and there are a whole lot of hurt people doing a lot of fucked up things to one another. It feels like the cruelty is the point.

But as I said, it starts within. And that’s where I’m feeling this myself.

My biggest fears involved being left abandoned and alone and left to die. I’ve never been far from that feeling since as long as I can remember, and emotionally I’ve always been on my own. All my life I’ve desperately longed for the opposite. I’ve wanted a home where I felt fully seen, loved, connected where I knew without a doubt that I belonged.

Now I’ve had a lot of good, kind, loving people in and out of my life through the years as well as the bullies, grifters, and life drainers. I continue to this day. And yet, I’ve never fully found home. I’ve found places that I really enjoyed, where I felt welcome and could let my guard down some. But they’ve all had some degree of a shelf life. None have ever been home.

Maybe I’m just one of those people for whom home will never exists. It makes me sad to think about.

But what comes with all of that is I’m hypervigilant when it comes to any kind of sign where I may not be welcome, and I’m primed to bounce. I know this isn’t healthy but in a lot of ways it’s also kept me safe, certainly has protected me in the past from some really dark roads I could have tumbled down. It’s also burned some bridges that maybe didn’t need to be. Not sure if I can ever draw out a true “debit/credit” balance sheet on this because life just doesn’t work that way, but I’ll always wonder.

Even these days, I still see myself locked in that space where the fear of being unloved and unwanted an consume me. It’s been eating me alive lately if I want to be REALLY honest.

I’ve been really working to get traffic to my Ko-Fi, and I’ve also created a mini weeklong group journaling program which is based on a similar structure to how I run the calls when I create the personalized vision audios that I offer.

I’ve gotten almost zero response from any of it. No questions, no interest, nobody even trying to tell me how stupid it is. Nothing. I wish I could say that it wasn’t bothering me, and I’m firm in my knowing I need to stay the course. But the truth is that it’s eating me alive. It’s eating me alive because all I see is “nobody wants what you offer, and this is what they all really think about you!”

I connect it back to the times as a kid where nobody wanted me around, or to when in so many different environments I figured out I wasn’t as welcome as I thought, or other projects and endeavors that I’ve created that failed because nobody wanted any part of them either.

Then my mind goes to the common denominator-me. It screams that it doesn’t matter if I were giving away pots of gold, nobody will ever take them from me.

And when finances aren’t that great to begin with (like many), the inner dialogue turns into “now your bills aren’t going to be paid, and you’re going to end up dead in an alley somewhere and it’s all because the world thinks you suck.”

So yeah, that’s always a bundle of joy to carry.

It’s certainly a tale of how when we can’t shake our fears to the point where all the information that we consume keeps the obsessions over them alive, to the point where the metamorphosis into Partisan Rage Bot becomes an eventuality.

However, it’s also a cautionary tale of how our personal fears can consume us internally and devour our creative and other joys.

Certainly, a frustrating tale for me, because I’d been working so hard at trying to find acceptance with what is and to let go of this bullshit only to have it come rearing back at me so goddamn hot and heavy over the last couple of days. That’s the journey, none of it is linear. Sometimes it’s two steps back, or a different layer of what I thought I worked through.

That’s how it is, though. The life journey isn’t a video game where once you clear all the levels you’ve mastered it and you’re done. There are always obstacles and struggles along the way. Often, they create fear or feed off of already existing fears.

Fear is not a thing that can be avoided. A person that tells you they don’t do fear is a person that is either in denial or flat out lying.

Fear is also not the enemy. The more we fight it the more it consumes us because by channeling all of that energy into it we just create the perfect environment for it to spiral out of control.

I hear people talking about making friends with fear. That’s a great goal to have but that can be hard to expect right away. I mean, the mind is going to find that a tad suspicious. But it’s important to remember that even if our worst fears come to fruition that we’ve made it out of every storm we have experienced so far, and the odds are in our favor when the next one barrels at us. If we can come at it from a space of acceptance (not giving up, not in fight mode…think of it as something like balance) then it becomes easier to roll with it, and maybe we can be a little more aware of possible life rafts that may be around us that otherwise may not be visible.

Maybe with acceptance, it’s possible to find a little peace? Baby steps are a little easier for us to process. Especially when there may be things attached to the fear, if the fear is a trauma response due to some really bad stuff that happened in the past, it’s certainly a callous act to just push someone into the deep end and tell them “just be friends!” It’s a process, as with most things. Processes include time, steps, breakthroughs, and stumbles. And definitely seek out support along the way, it may be our journey, but we’re not supposed to do this all alone…I realize the irony of connecting that with my biggest fear…wait, is that irony or is it more Alanis irony? Look, it’s been a long week and I’m tired, okay?

Anyway, so yeah, I guess this message was meant for future me to explore and in a much different, more personal way. So, here it is.

Thanks for reading, if you’re interested in more writing and content like this I invite you to support me on Ko-Fi and get first looks and exclusives, among other goodies.