Tag: letting go of fear

Dangling

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Climax

[Alfred Hitchcock’s “North By Northwest” 1959 – the Mount Rushmore scene]

I had no idea that letting go of the past and my destructive behavioral patterns would be this hard to do.  It is very painful and so difficult to break through the fear that has been my stalking shadow for almost 20 years. Letting go of the past and the person I was back then is actually much harder to do than when I was dealing with it in therapy. Then I was investigating myself and the tragic events that had happened to me. With the understanding that followed I had to accept the things I found. Once I knew something new about myself, it was impossible to go back to the way I used to be. I have been moving forward, mentally and emotionally, for years. Every day.

But even if I can’t go back to how my I used to live my life – it is difficult to start something new, with a new ‘thinking style’, new behavior, new boundaries and new perspective on things (and myself). Here is the place to change and it doesn’t happened just because you reached that place. You need to work hard. Harder, than ever. To let go, is to stop holding on to things that are familiar to you, everything you know about yourself and the world around you.

And you have to decide whether you want to hold on to things that are uncomfortably comfortable, things that makes you feel safe and trapped at the same time, or if you want to let go and it’s scary as hell and you don’t know what’s waiting on the other side but you know you just can’t go on like this anymore.

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It leaves you dangling on the edge of a cliff for a while. That’s where I am right now. Looking down to see if I can ensure myself that once I let go, I won’t hurt myself, but I can’t see anything, my fear is blocking the view like a heavy fog.

As long as I am fooling myself that I am more safe on the edge of the cliff than to risk hurting myself when I fall, I won’t be able to let go.

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I am feeling so vulnerable and fragile right now, dangling off this cliff and here – at this very place, where I am so exposed, I have to fight my fear, like fighting a dragon, to finally just let go and hope for the best.

I know I am being brave, but I just feel like crying.

When love is a crime scene

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Yesterday feels like a black hole in my mind. I feel emotionally hungover. Something happened and triggered my PTSD symptoms and I was sucked back into the trauma again. Starting over with an new love, in a new relationship is hard for me. Trust is so very difficult, and accepting real love and to be loved without waiting for a betrayal or to be prepared to be humiliated, is even harder.

My trauma didn’t happen in a dark alley somewhere downtown, or in a park at night. My trauma happened right in the trust and in the love I thought I shared with the man I had let inside my heart. Love was the scene of the crime.

And now, when I have overcome the PTSD and the person I’d become because of the fear and the constant humiliation, I choose to love again, whole heartily and totally, and for the first time I am willing to accept the unconditionally love from another man – even though I am more used to neglect or aggressiveness than love. I feel more at home in humiliation than in tenderness. I feel more comfortable with waiting for the disrespect than to feel respected. And I don’t understand the concept of love as it is supposed to feel – warm, sensual, naked and intimate. It’s all I ever wanted – but I don’t speak the language of accepting it.

Now, I am forced to revisit my crime scene, not in the dark alley or in the park at night, but in trusting love again. It is hard and excruciatingly painful at times. In situations where I am so used to being ridiculed or ignored, I have to accept to just be seen – as I really am, and accepted and loved. It’s like preparing yourself to be hit by a train that’s coming right at you, but instead of the crash, somebody is holding you, and won’t let go until you understand that you are completely safe and there’s no train in sight.

To be safe to feel vulnerable – is the most beautiful thing I have experienced but it is also the scariest thing you could do after a trauma (or in my case, two). I am scared to death of being betrayed, but I am brave enough to risk it. I am doing it. I am going against my fear, I am ignoring the PTSD and the old behavioral patterns I repeated in my past – I am letting go – and starting over.

It’s so fucking scary.

And so incredibly wonderful.