Fear is the inability to be intimate with vulnerability. That pretty much sums up my feelings/life right about now regarding everything. I am vulnerable. I hate it. I am working my ass off to pile pretty things around me that make me forget my vulnerable state and the weakness I so detest. I don't want anyone to see how wounded I am, how alone and terrified I am of the future, my vulnerability. So life was sucky, yes, but it was sure. I knew what my days would consist of, I knew what to expect. Sure, I expected hell, pain, damage, tears, but there was a measure of security in knowing what I was in for and that it was sure to continue.
I finally took the plunge and started down this path and I am glad I did of course. But the uncertainty, the daily challenges, the disorientation at my surroundings, it's making me so uncomfortable that my core being just wants to return back to what it knew. Abuse, pain, fear, tears, is more appealing in many instances than just the unknown. I am finding out every day how much he took from me. He is all I knew. He knew that. And he used it to control me, to make me think that the hell I was in was normal. He walked through life smug knowing he had me wrapped up and I didn't have the presence of mind or the ability to question. Just accepted it all and now here I am, having flung open the cage door, I stand just in the doorway with a look of terror, shielding my face from the hot glare of reality, of the world as it really is. And as my eyes adjust I start to see things as they are and my mouth hangs open in shock. The world is more beautiful than I knew. There is more for me than I thought, more I could have had. And it takes my breath away and in the next fills me with such terror with the thought of "what else don't I know?" I feel so ignorant, stupid, naive. To look back at my blissfully ignorant existence and how unaware I was just makes me want to vomit. How DID I take it for so long? How could I look in the mirror and not SEE?
I have to just persevere. Wait until living without a map becomes the norm. Wait until unfamiliarity feels familiar. Until my eyes adjust to living in the dark and my hands become calloused from bumping into things I can't see. Then that will be normal. That will be my existence and I will feel at home again. I can do this, I can swallow the lump in my throat, put my chin up and just go. Defeat is not an option. Going back is not an option. Just move forward.
