Life in embedded fear
I have been taken by my own emotions in the last few months, finally coming to a certain reconciliation with the fear that lives in me; it is just about the time when horizons of a good life are opening.
I could be so disturbed, to a level where good news is fearful news to me. My life has been in such a state of continuous avalanches that I don’t know anymore what normal is.
A decade of the struggle of a rough divorce, with all its complexed issues. A man, society, a husband, children, work, a whole structure that organized itself to maintain a living messed with fear.
Has it been the fear of encountered threats in a decade of difficulties and obstacles that seemed to have been systematically founded to maintain a status quo?
Or has it been a decade that stole away my life just a decade before?
A decade after a decade and my life is engraved inside fear that I have just realized caused by one man.
How come he has all this control over my existence? I thought the divorce with all its burdens is a breaking out of that fear. Being liberated from a monster that terrorized my life with a figure of a man.
Each time I think I broke out of that fear, I realize that he drags me back with horror.
For more than a decade of divorce, I avoided consciously to touch those thirteen years of marriage, except with horrific instances that made me reach to a divorce. I was deliberately maneuvering myself, thinking often, why do I avoid it. It is true I could talk about things for hours. After al lit has been years of many hours that can be to the minimum described as bearable.
I spent years fighting the fear I feel towards him. After all, I managed to get rid of him, I always ensured myself. But did I? Was always another echo of a sound that came to the back of my mind?
I have noticed that I have been trying to break out of this recently. I still enter there and run away as soon as the instances of fear surround me.
It is not just instances of the feeling. It overwhelms me. It scares me. I feel that there is no escape.
He is worthless. He is a total loss I keep assuring myself.
But he manages to scare me.
Why did I spend more than half of a decade in psychological counseling trying to explore my childhood, when my problem was so obvious? It has been that fear of him that has been suffocating me from the very moment he became the destiny of my life in fear.
I haven’t spoken to him since half a year. Except a week ago with the company of the kids. Ridiculously feeling victorious that I have spoken out my frustrated mind, towards what in a normal life would be just an ordinary act, of a father being responsible. Or whatever minimum of being a parent can be. Minimal is the contribution.
As I spoke to him today, in what a reasonable discussion should have been around in our case… regardless of what it was or what has it been. It was fear. What I realized was so embedded in me.
I feared him. That be afraid of a child horrified has in.
I found myself shedding tears in flaws I didn’t know how they were coming. I didn’t know why. I felt that old scared little girl cuddling herself into the corner of the room again … in me. …Embracing myself with non-stopping tears. Tears of horrific fear.
It has been fear all along.
I was maneuvering around it for the last decade. Exactly the same way I was moving around living with him for a decade.
It is fear of something I cannot identify why it refuses to leave me. It is like fearing death. Concerning disease. No. concerning diseases can be avoidable.
The same fear that lived with me for more than two decades. Am afraid that marks my adulthood life. Am afraid that controls every step I take. Every move I make. Fear of a horror of a man that can be as unavoidable as death … fierce and cold. …Exactly like the evilness of mortality.
I always wonder how little fear of fearful things can effect me much … it is a life of fear in a disguise of a man once called husband.continues to terrorize my life…
A word of threat from a meaningless man … but yet has a living power of evilness and cruelty that can still threaten my world in just a word…
I am writing all this … trying to challenge the fear he sought to impose on me today … about prohibiting me from writing about him.
Insisting in a way to still break that fear he viciously engraved in me.
You very clearly have PTSD, and I imagine this is something you may have discussed in counseling. The fact that you did, in fact, write and publish this is an excellent sign. You are releasing some of the toxicity through the outlet of writing, which is precisely why I write so much. It is not one human being, but several, who left me with PTSD, and some of them were mere children, not a terrorizing, domineering, abusive spouse. When I look back now, I become angry at the power these little turds and by extension, their families and the institution which defended them, to have had such a significant impact on who I am, what I am, and how I respond to life, to potential relationships, to mere mundane events of daily existence which for the average person are no more than routine, or passing thoughts. The nightmares and flashbacks, the hyper vigilance, the overanalyzes of people and their motives, the fear, the mistrust: this legacy of a relatively short time in my life which informs so much of who I am. I wonder what I could have been, who I would have been, what I might have done, without what they forced upon me. This was decades ago. It is entirely possible that you will get past this enough that you will no longer feel it s fear, that you will get past it enough that it is an unpleasant memory. But if not, if it stays, lingers, and remains imbedded, just remember that also imbedded is the power that compelled you to escape, to face it, to acknowledge it, and to write about it.
thank u …
Beautifully done, milady.
I echo all the first commenter said, with my own admiration added… You are, with this piece of writing, taking a step, toward being,perhaps, not freed from the fear, but, freed from having to bow down to it. To lose fear, it must be faced, with courage, long enough to learn how to let it go; that is what this signifies. You have that courage, as the adult, intelligent, strong woman you have become. The child’s feelings, based in the powerlessness felt during those years, do not have to remain your own now….
A famous author, of a very famous science fiction novel, once wrote a Litany Against Fear, which is, I believe, more effective as a mental tool than many would think… It goes like this, and can be used a a mantra when experiencing fears we recognize, to wit:
I must not fear.
Fear is the mind-killer.
Fear is the little-death that brings total obliteration.
I will face my fear.
I will permit it to pass over me and through me.
And when it has gone past I will turn the inner eye to see its path.
Where the fear has gone there will be nothing.
Only I will remain.
From the novel, Dune, by Frank Herbert
Once the fear is gone, knowledge, and will, can deal with whatever we experience…
And, keep writing; your writing speaks for many who have experienced fear as a daily part of life, giving them what strength of mind and will you have learned….
Well done…
A friend across the world, with love
gigoid