FEAR

Fear sucks.

Do I really want to do this?

Okay, I'll try to say more than that. Because fear is this thing that we all feel at times. Some people are all about confronting their fears. I know times when I've confronted a fear, face to face, and the fear ceased. And sometimes I've confronted a fear face to face and it has been awful and the face-off created new fears to arise and caused a lot of havoc in my life. So is it helpful to confront your fears, or is it dangerous and prone to backfire? I don't know. But some people are all about confronting their fears.

And some people are all about avoiding the situations and things that cause them fear. I've dealt with fears this way lots of times. Like I wanted to move in with a boyfriend once. And I'd asked him before and he said he wasn't ready yet. So I didn't ask him again. I was afraid of being rejected so I just avoided that topic for years and got very comfortable living alone until he was ready, I guess, and he needed a roommate. And then I moved in, but we never talked about how best to do it because I was afraid he'd say no and reject my ideas again. So I never brought up the fact that I didn't necessarily want to move into that place with him, but would have preferred to find a brand new place. And I rarely brought up the topic of rearranging furniture, or changing stuff on the bedroom wall, or getting rid of some of our stuff because when I tried to do this initially, I felt my suggestions were rejected because he didn't have time or he liked having all these matching but space consuming side tables and sofa set. So I stopped asking because I was afraid of another rejection-sounding answer. But sometimes, avoiding a situation that cause you fear, like driving blindfolded, is really smart. And safe. And perhaps can maintain the peace of a relationship instead of shaking things up over a minor disagreement that really doesn't have anything to do with love or commitment. You just ignore the fact that he leaves his tea bags on the kitchen counter or toss them in the compost bucket instead of letting that annoyance surface and having a big fight over a pet peeve, resulting in reinforced fear of bringing up annoyances--and those other annoyances might not be such small potatoes. So avoiding being afraid can be easy and it sure can feel like the safest option, or it can be a poisonous plant that eating a little of isn't so bad, but if you eat a lot, you're going to have to go to the hospital and get your stomach pumped.

Then some people ignore a fear. Pretend it isn't there, even though it is and your stomach is all queasy. Like I am afraid of falling down skiing or hiking or wake boarding. But I still do these things, even though I'm uncomfortable when the trail is steep and dry and I'm going downhill and my hiking boots are slipping with every step. Please, please, please DON'T BIFF IT--but hey, I'm still doing it. Maybe I'll biff it and get cut up. Or break a bone. And then maybe I will acknowledge that fear more and be reluctant to go hiking on steep dusty trails. If I don't ignore it, would I still go hiking? Or would I talk about the fear constantly while doing it and say out loud all the time "Please, please, please DON'T BIFF IT"? Ignorance is bliss, but if you aren't truly ignorant, but playing make believe, and the make believe sweet unicorn turns out to be a vampire unicorn... Eek.

And then some people just let fear take over and paralyze them. Actually, if confronting fear, avoiding fear-causing situations, or ignoring the existence of your fear backfires, well, it doesn't take much for paralysis to swoop in and stiffen your limbs with fear. I guess paralyzing fear is why I am writing about fear today. Because it SUCKS. And even when you feel paralyzed by fear, fearsome stuff still happens. Then not only are you paralyzed by fear but you are surrounded by the fearsome stuff that has mounded up all around you. You are now also frozen and surrounded by fears and it feels impossible to move. And if you move, you have to go through the scariest stuff possible and there could be more fearful stuff beyond the piles--you just can't know. Which causes MORE fear.

So I am having problems with fear. I always have had issues with fear. It doesn't feel good, so not having issues with fear seems kind of unrealistic to me. But I suppose I could have fewer issues with fear if I could learn to care less. I care a lot. About EVERYTHING. Care Bears--they know nothing about caring. And I care so much about how to do this or how to talk to y, that I don't do anything because the fear of doing it wrong paralyzes me and--whether my caring is about how best to communicate with a family member going through a rough time or about cleaning out my fridge and separating the compost stuff from the recyclable stuff from the garbage and doing the dishes so I can cook dinner--I end up doing almost nothing. I don't clean the fridge. I don't call. I obsess about my concern and how I could screw it up and then it is time to eat and I haven't called that family member or dealt with the fridge at all and I'm eating blueberries and tortilla chips for dinner because they're not stale or bad yet and they require no preparation--though I should technically wash those blueberries. I can be paralyzed in fear and concern and still eat those things. Yes, this is ridiculous and wasteful and self absorbed and stupid to the max.

So ever since I moved out of my place with Tomato and into my new old apartment, I've had scores of days where I'm just wasting my time away debating whether I should do this or that and it is because I am afraid. I am afraid I will organize my files wrong so I still haven't finished unpacking my files and desk stuff. I moved in early MAY. I haven't gone through receipts and updated my expenses and then applied that data to my "budget" that I haven't created yet because I'm collecting spending and earning data still because the project totally inspires fear in my heart because it's mounded up so high. When I was in Costa Rica, I didn't feel paralyzing fear. I did things. I dealt with the fear one way or another and if it backfired, I dealt with that. When I am out and about, I don't feel paralyzed by every decision. When I was on vacation with my family, I felt fear, but I wasn't paralyzed and not doing things. I did things. Being back here in this apartment now, after living somewhere else with someone else and having fears about us or the place or our time or how I said x or y pop up in my face all the time and having to deal with them whether they went away or not, being back here has had a somewhat paralyzing effect on me. I am afraid. I fear starting anything here or finishing anything in this space. And this doesn't bode well for my immediate future. And that doesn't bode well for my future further along. So I have to get out of the fear or get out of this apartment. This apartment used to be my sanctuary! What happened?

When I ask myself this--why am I so paralyzed with petty fears and wasting my time and sleeping hours away in a place where I used to be so industrious?--it doesn't take long for me to figure it out. I am afraid to embrace this place as my own again because that would be fully acknowledging that I live in a place on my own again and that I can't go back to that apartment I didn't want to move into necessarily in the first place because the person I wanted to move in with who wasn't ready when I first asked isn't living there anymore and I only moved in there because I wanted to live with him. And I can't go live with him because he and I don't share our lives anymore, and I hear his place is even smaller than my old new place anyway--I don't fit there, just like he didn't fit here. I am afraid to embrace this place as my own again because that would be fully accepting that I am not in a relationship where I can lean over and kiss my partner on the cheek good night anymore, fully accepting that I don't have a relationship with him at all these days, fully accepting that I am single, fully accepting that I am alone. Fully accepting that I can not entertain the idea that we can brush this under the rug and get back together for a second because it isn't going to happen, even if I don't know that 100%, another idea I can't entertain for a second because if I entertain these ideas, I will stay frozen in this apartment, I will never fully accept that I am single, that I am alone, and that I can live my life however I want to right now and that this fact alone has the potential to be exciting, productive, beautiful, and fulfilling, even if it IS going to be scary often. But being with someone was scary too. I can't escape fear. But I can avoid fearful situations if I want, or not. And I can ignore the feeling if I want, or not. And I can confront it face to face if I want, or not. But I can't let it paralyze me anymore in the place that I refer to home, even though I don't feel at home here like I did before, at least I don't yet.

Fear sucks. But it isn't going anywhere, and if I want to go anywhere or do anything in this place, I have to deal with it one way or another, and then I have to move on. Scary, but maybe it can be scary and fun at the same time. Like this...

How not to get any writing done

1. Go out of town all the time and try to pack every moment with action. Forget to at least journal at all, despite buying a new notebook.
2. Return to town and be besieged with:
A. mess left from packing for trip
B. mess created unpacking from trip
C. build up of bills to pay, e-mails to reply to, plants gone mad or dying, replying to texts and voice mails
D. appointments made pre-trip
E. engagements with friends, the grocery store, and laundry machine
F. preparing for another trip
3. Trying to tend to all unfinished projects at once so that, when you return from this next trip, you have time and cleanliness for writing productivity (i.e. finish unpacking from move, filing bills from January on and organizing filing system in general, garden things, knitting projects from last fall, uploading pictures from last June on, cleaning up computer so it has enough memory for all this shite to be uploaded, setting up new external HD after old one died, getting rid of stuff so there is space to unpack from move, cleaning things really really good).
4. Get sick and watch stuff on Hulu late at night while drinking tea. Really late at night.
5. Sign up for a 5-class summer yoga pass and then realize that there was a brochure misprint and you only have a week and a half to use your pass and not waste the money.
6. Decide this is the perfect time to try waxing. At home.
7. Facebook. Facebook. And Facebook.
8. Reading other people's blogs.
9. Not having any food of substance to eat at home so needing to go out to eat all the time.
10. Writing blogs like this to give the illusion that I'm really a writer.

hello, I am a 33-year-old woman who isn't living up to somebody's, anybody's, this body's expectations.

So if you read my November post about Tomatoes and Tomahtoes and the challenges of being a Tomahto in love and in a relationship with a Tomato, I posed a question about what it might look like if the Tomato-Tomahto Soup doesn't work out.
Here's your answer:

My feet in my hammock on the garden patio of my former and once again apartment for one. Yup, the Tomahto and Tomato called the whole thing off. And while I didn't know what that would look like exactly, I had some expectations and they totally were off base. I thought it would be sad (TRUE) and that we'd share that sadness and the process together (NOT TRUE). I thought we'd be able to hang out and be really good friends and help each other out and still confide in each other about tough life events (NO, NO, NO, and NOOOOO). Expectations--blech. What gives with expectations? And when will I ever stop having them and clinging to them?

This could get very Buddhist. I could go into the 8 Worldly (or Mundane) Concerns or Conditions. Hell, why not? These 8 concerns preoccupy a good deal of how we spend our time and generally monopolize our thoughts one way or another. They're all about craving, obtaining, and clinging to what we perceive as pathways to happiness and away from suffering, i.e. 1. pleasurable experiences; 2. pleasing material possessions, 3. pleasuring reactions from others to our actions (praise); and 4. having a pleasing reputation with others as a super-fantastic human being. The other 4 concerns revolve around our fear of losing or not obtaining these perceived pleasures and perhaps finding ourselves on pathways we perceive as undesirable and causes for suffering through 5. painful experiences; 6. loss or failure to obtain material possessions; 7. displeasure from others to our actions (blame); and 8. having a negative reputation among others as being totally unlovable or toxic or stupid or dangerous or unkind or a waste of the earth's oxygen supply, etc.

Anyway, humans (especially Americans) invest an awful lot of time working to get these things, be this way, etc. and not experience ugly things, like sitting next to someone with horrible body odor at a concert. And we are quick to form EXPECTATIONS that we deserve and can get the pleasure things and then we'll be happy. Vice versa, we EXPECT that avoiding the person with B.O. will prevent suffering in our lives, and that we will suffer great unhappiness upon losing one's i-pod. Okay, these are very superficial examples of expectations and how we feel entitled to happiness and seek it very superficial means and how suffering is for other people, "not me, God forbid" and we don't ever expect it and then when the shit hits the fan... well, it really hits the fan because we never expected it to hit the fan, we expected it to miss the fan all together and now we're covered in it and don't know what to do about poo.

And our expectations about what will bring us joy and what will save us from suffering tend to be wrong. I had a grocery list of expectations and wishes that I thought would bring Tomato-Tomahto happiness and end the Tomato-Tomahto troubles. And then some unexpected troubles arise, and wham! I was staring at my expectation list and going... "aw, shit, this stuff isn't going to happen. Not now. Maybe never." And I'd been wasting time clinging onto it, afraid to pursue certain items because I expected some items on the list to be difficult and cause some suffering to go through, though I expected going through the suffering would ultimately result in more pleasure. Which may have been true, except that the unexpected troubles pretty much rained all over my expectation list and blurred the ink beyond recognition so I was left thinking, "What DID I expect? How much time did I spend turning my wheels over this totally illegible expectation list? Did having that list make me happy even?"

I can answer those questions now: I don't know what I expected, but it was a lot of something; I probably spent a couple years spinning my wheels over that list, if it wasn't just a Tomato-Tomahto specialized amendment to a life-long expectation list; and having that expectation list made me miserable and stressed out. And realizing this REALLY made me miserable and stressed out because I realized I was defining myself by expectations of things that were not likely to come to bear, expectations and wants that actually stressed me out and were bad for my mental health--and the Tomato too--and if I eventually had checked off the things on the list, I might not be an iota happier and I'd form another list of expectations of wants and not wants. So I flipped out and ripped up the list, but that doesn't mean I didn't form a zillion new expectations and "If I just get a car, I'll feel happier" and "He's better off without me and he would have left me sooner or later anyway." (Those expectations? Yes, The car did make me feel happier at first, and it is helpful to have my own wheels. But it has drawbacks, like expenses and the environmental impact and I don't bike, walk, or bus as much anymore--which I don't like. And I don't know if he's better off without me or that he would have left me sooner or later--how could I know that? I'm not him and he might not know those things either.)

Sometimes, I expect the absolute worst, which depending on how much I want the opposite, can make me act like a total psycho. I cry and scream about something that might not even be real and then I'm REAL popular with my close company. Sometimes, expecting things to be crappy and deciding to suffer through it anyway can lead to some surprises--things aren't as crappy as I expected and I even experience moments of joy or peace in what I expected to be a shit storm. On those occasions, I really wonder why I waste brain space expecting anything because things really never go the way one expects them to. Maybe close, but not exactly. And if I stop expecting things, like a friendship with the Tomato, or for the Tomato to start dating someone I know which causes me to get insanely jealous... I'm just wasting time. Expectations and "What if?" obsessions are great for the characters and plot lines in my fiction. But in real life, I'd like to expect a lot less of everything and be in the moment as it arises, be it happy or miserable.

I expect not expecting sunbeams or hailstorms in my daily forecast would/could/will/might be very challenging for me!

8 months of ice skating

So... I guess it has been 8 months since my last post. Can I wear that as a badge of pride, like how long it's been since someone in AA has had a drink?
And I'd like to say that I've been finishing my novel and selling it during those 8 months but I am a lousy liar.
Sometimes, life just gets in the way and you just have to drop all your expectations and the expectations of others and fall back and down. And then you hope you have the strength to come out through the other side. Like you're the female in a ice skating pairs duo and you're being thrown off your skating partner's shoulders and through his legs--and you don't want your ass to drag on the ice in this process because, um, OW--and then you're supposed to do a little spin in the air before sticking a landing on one skate with your other leg perfectly extended at a 90 degree angle and smile like you are sponsored by a toothpaste company.
So that's what I've been up to, falling back and down and tossed through and out. And I definitely made some contact on my butt and I didn't quite spin the full 360 degrees, and I know I'm barely coasting on that one foot and my other leg is more at a 45 degree angle... And I keep getting the eye from my toothpaste sponsors because I'm so focused on trying not to bite it that I forgot all about them, so my smiles have been a little spastic.
But I'm still upright and soon, I'll be ready to put my other foot down and free skate. And when I do that, you better bet I will be finishing my book and doing amazing things from the volition and strength of my own two skates. Things I want to do and that I don't have to do and that I can quit doing if I don't want to do them any more. But I will finish the book and then I will coerce myself to edit book a lot. And I think I'd like to take scuba lessons. Or dance lessons. Or wood shop. Or go to Costa Rica--wait, just did that! Blogging? We shall see. Blog v.s. salsa v.s. novel... Hmm, something tells me blogging isn't going to win that show down. Yes, we shall see.