Scary

God, getting back to a blog is as hard as getting back to the gym!

Thinking of fear this morning. Scary, huh? We recovery-types talk about fear a lot. Some even refer to it as an evil and corroding thread. If that's not enough to scare a guy, I don't know what is.

In my years of emotional isolation - that would be from birth to about age 44, give or take a few good years here and there - I experienced a lot of paralyzing fear. My Momma would have called it worry. I read countless self-help books and burned my share of smudge sticks, but the consequences continued to mount. I would occasionally get high on some new book or meditation and get just a glimpse of what freedom from fear would be like. It would be this brief moment of "OMG, I can do anything I want to. What am I doing sitting here like an idiot?" Then it would pass and I would remember that as soon as I stick my neck out that door, sure as shootin' there will be some asshole just waiting to lop my head off.

Fear masqueraded in my life as legitimate concern - concern about how I look, I mean someday you may want to hire me or maybe even bed me; concern about every word I choose to use, after all it could be used in some kangaroo court to condemn me for being a homosexual or even worse a liberal or just concern that if I do not present correctly no one will want to play with me.

As much as I lament over the seeming cruelty of aging, the truth is that life for me began at age 44. With the help of a lot of people with a common solution for a common problem I have commenced to outgrow fear. That fleeting feeling of freedom I discussed earlier, well these days I get to experience that feeling on a regular basis. Although still very intermittent, it comes now many times a week.

If that isn't just the shits. So happy this morning.