Fear that’s said its prayers*

*The topic of prayer is for another day. Maybe instead of equating prayer with “God” think of praying as having a conversation with a force that’s both benevolent and kind, an energy that lives within you and around you (and inside all of us), one that loves you no matter what, will guide you always, even if you decide to ignore its message (think: intuition/gut feeling). Think of this whatever-it-is as a best friend. It could be the version of your higher self, a spirit of some beloved ancestor, the actual voice of your bestie, or the collective wisdom of all beings past and present. This energy/force could be all of these and more. Name it whatever you like: higher power, goddess, god, grandfather, grandmother, earth mother, LOVE*

I don’t come to this page today willingly. It’s been about two years since I last posted something and I wanted to come back and visit. But instead of reading bits and pieces of old posts, I’ve just spent an hour tooling around the website reminding myself I have no idea what a widget or plugin is and how either of them may or may not help me organize this messy blog. How frustrating it is to I say all I want to do is write when really what I want is this blog to be perfect. That includes, of course, the writing.

So why on earth am I actually here? (I have to pause. It takes me a moment to recognize it, to feel it fully). The truth is I’m terrified.

Where to start. I’m not only talking about the fear that centers around today’s pandemic, our (as in OUR WORLD’S) state of crisis surrounding Covid-19.  Amidst this topic, there is much to explore, and fears abound. But it’s only a piece of why I’m here.

To back up a bit: I am an introvert by nature. I love people, for the most part, and enjoy connecting with them, specifically in one-on-one interactions rather than in groups. I adore dancing, especially swing dancing, but really I’m in love with any kind of movement where I can feel the music through my body as I move across the floor. In my work, I teach and engage quite a bit with people, both with individuals and in groups. So I also need my quiet time, spells of silence where I can rebalance my hardworking nervous system. Like many of us, I have a habit of getting overstimulated.

Making sure I have this essential alone time gets complicated when I bring into the mix the ingredients of depression and anxiety. In terms of enjoying solo quiet time, and using it as a practice of self-care, depression and anxiety are total buzzkills. Time alone when feeling emotionally stable, a dear friend, turns instead into a bitter enemy when mental illness flares.

In recent months I have been the smooth pendulum that swings from depression to anxiety and then back again. Somewhere in between I find balance, I feel my emotions, they crest, break and recede like the salty waves they are, always in movement, a part of a vast and changing ocean; and I don’t get swept up in their seductive tides.

When schools closed a few weeks ago I had already stopped dancing and getting together with friends. Due to physical illness (chronic autoimmune issues) and severe depression, I couldn’t make myself go to anything that felt even remotely social. I could barely get myself out of bed. And as usual, because I knew dancing and seeing friends is a crucial part of self-care, I felt like a piece of shit for failing at taking care of myself.

Then shortly thereafter, essential businesses shut down, and those of who were able to, tucked ourselves away in our homes. My very first reaction was relief (quite quickly suppressed by the weight of shame): I didn’t have to feel bad about bailing on social stuff. Now I HAD to stay home. I had permission to tightly curl myself around my dog, and cover our warm cuddled mass with a big blanket. Isolation was not only encouraged, it was mandated. A tiny version of myself that lives in my head jumped up and down with joy.

My best friend sent me a meme yesterday. The first frame shows a character (deemed “anxious”) jumping up and down yelling: “Everything’s cancelled! Everything’s cancelled!”. In the next frame the same character looks somewhat deflated repeating to himself, “Everything’s cancelled.” I know exactly what he’s talking about.

Just like the cartoon man, in the beginning stage of this self-isolation phase, relief was then overwhelmed by how many things I was going to finally “get done” now that I was forced to be home. A shorter version of that list: organize EVERYthing, including going through the emotionally charged piles of my grandfather’s things (the same grandfather who passed away last year). Get rid of things I don’t need: clothes I don’t wear, books I never intend to read. Work more on my art, organize art supplies; write write write! Create a website that incorporates everything I love to do (writing, making art, taking care of children, teaching yoga) all in the context of trying to connect with the beings out there who also struggle with and suffer from the emotional storms of mental illness. At this point in the game, I think we all may be a little depressed and anxious.

In short I said to myself: I am going to use this self-quarantining time to do every single thing I’ve wanted to do over the last several years but haven’t done because of all kinds of reasons but really and truly BECAUSE I’M TERRIFIED OF WHAT WILL HAPPEN WHEN I ACTUALLY DO THEM. And so I confronted another, more personalized version of that powerful emotion fed by updated minute-to-minute breaking news and the long empty shelves that once held paper products and canned goods.

FEAR.

That terrible, and at times crucial survival tool, a looming monster, insidious and unforgiving in its paralytic capacity.

Will my best friend get sick? Are my relatives over 60 who live states away getting what they need? Is my long-distance almost-grandmother going crazy because of isolation (it seems like she may be)? Will people be able to recover from this world-wide trauma? Am I going to get my jobs back? Will we keep learning to support each other or will we allow our fear of not surviving (in all kinds of ways) drive us further apart?

In a month, my roommate moves out. I face the loss of living with someone who, after almost four years, has become a sister to me. I realize now how used to our daily interactions I’ve become. Sure, at times we both rub each other the wrong way, like sandpaper against skin (I tend to be the more sensitive one; she, the less sentimental). Still. It’s her presence here that grounds me. It’s a comforting weight that draws me closer to home when in the height of anxious thoughts I am living 10,000 miles away. We don’t even have to share the same space. When I hear her needles clicking away in the next room as she knits, I see in my mind’s eye the purple yarn unspooling beneath her fingers. These days when I see so few people, and those I do see remain at some distance from me, my roommate and I dance around in each other’s orbits in the way only two people living together can. That human connection has almost been enough to sustain me.

At night I lie sleepless: How long can I live off this limited income? How will I cope living with a stranger? Will my depression get the best of me (I have seen the affects of suicide on those closest to me and I wouldn’t end my life but I can still get lost in the abyss of severe depression). All these worries live outside the periphery of my control. Yet if I let them, they have the power to overcome me. Some mornings I wake up, like today, and that rough current of anxiety is enough to drive me back into bed.

There are other fears. These are a thousand daggers whose sharp pierce shame my skin. They belong to me, are specific to my unique dreams and desires and are so easily lost in the day-to-day routine of living. These are the fears of unfulfilled potential; ones whose ghosts this recent crisis smugly resurrects. Will I finish any of those books I started? Will I try to publish something again? Will I share my writing, my art, with a larger community than my small circle of friends? What about that blog I started two years ago?  Will I go back to pushing myself beyond the confines of these fears, to use my ability to connect with people, through movement and yoga? Or will I succumb to believing that anything I do, everything that I am, isn’t good enough, and I’m fooling myself to think they’re even worth sharing.

These currents run deep. They intersect at the memories of rejection, of lost loves, old survival tools, and inherited beliefs. And they are challenged by the ongoing process of waking up and healing the wounds that keep us stuck. These are the scars that keep this emotional (and neurological) circuitry of fear in place.

Will I stay so scared of being loved and seen for exactly who I am that I keep myself from fully living?

Then I breathe. I notice my feet pressing into the floor. I inhale, pause and stare at my dog sleeping, listen to her snore. I hold myself back from sending my best friend another video of her doing both these things, and I remember that I’m here at the page, putting down one word at a time and hoping at the end I will have the courage to press “publish”.

“Courage is only fear that’s said its prayers”. This is one of my favorite sayings. I remind myself I can be afraid and still do, or be, whatever it is I’m afraid of doing (or being) anyway. I can even be terrified of an outcome (let’s say of our current state of things) and go on living and loving, stumbling over my imperfections along the way.

Three weeks have passed since my initial relief at being ordered to stay home. I remember it like a dream, a sweet spell where everything stops, the colors beat bright, and I’m filled with the blissful potential of creative fulfillment and completion of procrastinated tasks. I had a long list of to-do’s ready to be decimated but the self-satisfied slash of my red pen… and then the swift kick in the head of reality set in. Like many people, I’ve now lost both my jobs. One temporary, the other not. I am more and more isolated. I’m on a fixed income, not much savings. But I am lucky enough to be on SSDI disability, to have good insurance and access to healthcare. I am privileged, unlike so many, to have my basic needs met, at least for this month. Even in my lowest of lows I don’t forget this.

Every day things are changing, every moment presents another opportunity to be afraid and to stay stuck there,  immobilized. But each moment also presents the challenge of learning the nuances of these individual and collective fears. What if we become friendly with them, study their stitches and seams until they are as familiar as an old sweatshirt. Will they lose their power? Will they actually be comfortable? What if we connect with each other through our mutual understanding of what keeps us up at night. Will that shared experience bind us together, knowing our fates are common, intertwined? Can we practice doing this together and not alone.

Back to me.

So what about those very me-specific fears? The half-assed attempts at “books” stashed away in the desk? The lack of blog posts these past two years? Why am I not teaching those virtual yoga classes yet? I’ve had years to get my shit in order, what the hell is wrong with me? (you see what part the critic plays in this dialogue, right?).

Don’t get me wrong, over the years I’ve had a variety of excuses, some of which are legitimately disruptive to body-mind health and general well-being. But underneath these reasons, for that is a kinder word than excuse, is a raging current of fear. A tide so strong that though some days I can stay afloat with a little effort, others I struggle not to drown. I can’t lie, there are the days I willingly give in, feel myself sink. I want to give up. I call in sick, ignore the phone. The battle against being afraid is exhausting. Yet there are also times when I swim quite aware of the treacherous water I’m in, how the danger is mostly of my own making, the stories I tell myself more frightening than the reality that’s unfolding. I can do this only because I allow the water to be as it is, full of sharks and potential sea monsters, pressed close with limitless possibilities of the unknown. I don’t try changing the nature of the water itself. I choose to focus instead on each movement of breath and limb, to sync myself with the sun and air and all that’s alive around and inside me. On my very best days I swim with a love for swimming that eclipses the fear of drowning, of being eaten by a sea monster. Or forgetting how to swim.

Here I am, tucked away at home with plenty of time to create, to build, to put my dreams to paper. Here I am presented with the opportunity to try. And I’m standing face to face with my fear.

Will I allow its tide to swallow me today?

My thoughts charge forward: What happens if I fail? Or worse, what happens when I eventually go back to work? When time becomes limited, energy precious, and I continue to put off writing, making art, tending to a blog, a website, etc. because I’m too busy doing all the “practical” stuff of living. What happens if I never even try? 

Will I give in to the fear that deep down, this depression I feel is me; that in truth I have nothing to give that others would actually want. And without anything to give, I am absolutely nothing.

Today I almost rather go back to bed than examine any of this. The truth is that I’ve been writing this post for three days now. The truth is that coming to this page is what’s keeping me going.

I don’t have a solid answer to any of this. I wish I could build one of concrete and stone. Something that would last forever, that I could climb into it and safely hide, weathering the storm of this rapidly changing time. Chanting the words, I am safe, I am loved. If only such permanent assurance existed. But as this time we live in accentuates with perfect clarity: nothing is permanent. No safety from pain and suffering is guaranteed. No system we create can protect us from the scars of living. Life is change. Constant and unrelenting. This is the way we learn, the only way to transform and evolve. So I only have an answer for this moment, one small word that has enough power to sustain me for now, for this breath and then the next, and will perhaps carry me into another day of living.

My “only for now” answer is this:

No, I will not let my fear of not being good, of not being enough, of not being lovable, overcome my attempt to create what I love and to share it with others. I will set my obsession with these fears aside, instead swim in their midst, and dare to risk reaching out with my words. But for this one moment, this one page, I won’t allow fear to swallow me into its dark forever night.