Fearing Your Own Mind

Fear of your own Mind

I've spent years trying to keep from facing some memories.  From time to time, something will drag them toward the surface, and a few times I've even thought to myself  "Hey, maybe I can do it this time.".  Thus far, that hasn't been the case.

It's amazing how you build walls to protect yourself.  How you engineer a life that allows you to keep yourself behind them. How desperately you will fight to protect them, even when you want nothing more than to bring them down.

I know that there are hundreds of thousands of people out there who are victims of violence or abuse.  I know I'm not the only one, and that my memories are no more traumatic or terror provoking to me than theirs are to them.  I know that I'm not the only person who wakes up feeling the same fear that I felt at that moment in my life when everything changed.  Fear is such an inadequate word.  I "fear" snakes.  I "fear" stinging insects, or bugs that cling to you.  I "fear" so many little things in life.   It seems such a small word, until it grasps you by the heart while you're still unsure if you are awake or asleep, and starts squeezing.  It seems like such a minuscule word until it creeps into your mind with you fully awake and lets itself run free there.  There it is wanting you not just to remember the way you felt at that moment, but to see it, to hear it, and to taste it.  How is that years later, the taste of blood in your mouth can seem so real?  The feeling of suffocating so palpable?  Why is that none of the wonderful memories of my life are so tangible?  What I wouldn't give to experience my child's birth that way again. But those memories fade.  Some do not.

Intimacy is such a trigger.  The incredible desire to let someone in.  Wanting to be able to give yourself to them.  Giving affection, love, intimacy, sexual pleasure is not the problem.  Being in control wasn't the issue.  But opening up, letting someone else have control, letting them love you and experience you is dangerous.  You're not in control.  Your mind is waiting for you to let go of just enough control, and it will throw out the visions at you with a vengeance.  It knows that you're trying to bring someone in, and that they may try to bring down the walls that it spends so much of it's energy maintaining.  Your mind tries so hard, to keep you alone.

I've been working on trying to get past some of this lately, and what I discovered is that my mind really seems to be my biggest enemy.  It's almost as if it knows that I'm trying to kill something inside of it.  Something it holds dear.  The closer I look at it, the more it stares back at me and says "Go ahead, look in here. Are you so sure that it couldn't be real? I can make it real."   What's so terrible, is I know that it's true.  For an instant, my mind can make it real.  How do you survive fearing your own mind?

Walls.  Lots and lots of walls.