Fear is a powerful thing, so hard to define at times. Is it just a feeling? Franklin Roosevelt told us that the only thing to fear is fear itself, as I sit hear trying to figure out what I want to say, I find that I am terrified of so many things. I worry about bills I have to pay. I fret about finding enough work. I question whether or not I am a good father, a good son, a good brother. I wonder if anyone feels the same way I do... I resent past mistakes, that have taken me down roads I never thought I would venture down. I constantly doubt myself and regret the pain I have caused, and all of this adds up to the thing I fear more the most... being alone.
I don't think this is an uncommon fear. No one likes to be alone, but why? Today we are bombarded with information and social media, but as we hide behind computer screens, tweeting and updating facebook statuses are we missing out? Deep down I just want to know that someone likes me, that someone is willing to have my back, like I am willing to have theirs. Is that wrong? I hope not.
This fear is so deeply ingrained in me that I have willing sold my soul for acceptance. I can tell you for a fact that if I was truly ok with being alone, I would have never tried silencing the voices in my head with drugs or alcohol. I wouldn't have slept with countless women, trying to mask the pain with one night of pleasure, that inevitably lead to more pain, not just for me. I preyed on the same pain I was feeling, seeking it out and exploiting it.
It is a vicious cycle, one that is hard to escape. I was so scared of being trapped in my own head, that for a long time I sacrifice the future on the alter of the now. Many of the choices I have made, and still make, where and are driven by that fear. It made me selfish. I excused it as self preservation. Slowly I became numb to the pain that I was causing, caring only about myself. The thing about this behavior is that it brought about what i feared the most. I sought out other selfish people, it helped me justify what I was doing, I would often be shocked that there was no loyalty. We were in the business of stealing souls, and business was good, but there is no honor among thieves, and these relationships would fall apart, sometimes it would only take days, other times months, and until recently years.
I am not saying that I have been a terrible person my entire life, but I have misplaced loyalties, and that is fact. The thing about fear is it is rooted in hate. For years I had a deep seeded self hatred, and I allowed that to poison every part of my life. It spread like a virus, making it easy to see myself as the victim and feel sorry for myself. Like a disease in my soul, Making me doubt everything, making it hard to trust anyone or anything. Slowly it gained momentum destroying almost every relationship I have ever been in, romantic or otherwise. It would be easy to blame every person that has ever wronged me, but if I am painfully honest with myself, I have to admit, that I played some part in every one of those failures. Sometimes it was a small part, other times the blame lands on me and only me.
In recent months I have had to take a hard look at my life and who was in it, and for the first time I am trying to make some changes for the positive. Am I perfect? Of course not, I would like to think that I am a work in progress. To tell the truth I am still terrified that no one will like me, or hear what I have to say. I constantly fight the guilt of the past. I have inflicted some serious wounds on my own psyche, and I will no doubt carry those scars for the rest of my life. To some extent I am ok with that, those scars serve as a reminder as too what I am capable of, and my hope is that they will deter me from making the same mistakes. Only time will tell.
I have spent a lot of time running from what I knew to be right. The brutal truth, is I knew, without a shadow of a doubt, that I was lost. I knew that I was hurting people, and more than anything I knew that I was afraid, but I never addressed the problem. As painful as it is for me to admit all of this, the only way to defeat fear is to confront it, head on. The only way to find my way out of the dark is to shine a light into the shadows, knowing full and well that I will not always like what I find.
I don't want to be fueled by hate anymore. I want to change things up. Love is the heart of hope, and I desperately want hope in my life, and that starts with me, I have to make that choice. I have to stand up and say enough is enough. I have started the process, and it is painful. I have had to cut people, that I counted as friends, out of my life. I have had to deal with feelings of rejection, and of rejecting.
Doubt still clouds my mind, but for the first time in a long time, hope is starting to crack that iron curtain. I can see a light, and it is humbling. There are so many people I need to apologize to, so if you are one of those people, please consider this a start. It would be easy for me to say the isolation I feel at this point is because of other people, but the simple fact is this, I cant control what anyone else does. My first responsibility is to myself... and I am SICK of being afraid. The dawn is on the horizon, so I press on, uncertain, and still afraid, but I no longer feel like I running from something, but instead towards something. For the first time in a long time I feel like I can breath again.
As the first week of this journey comes to a close I want to say thank you to everyone who has taken the time to read this little blog. The encouragement you have given me is wonderful and heart warming. This is like surgery for my soul, and surgery hurts at first, but sometimes it is the only way to heal.
-Micah
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