Scared

“Being SCARED isn’t a sign of weakness, not admitting you were SCARED is”

Thank you Karina Barton for this quote.

As an adult admitting we are SCARED and need help can in itself be really SCARY. Especially if you are a recovering anti-dependent like me. Yes people like me are the opposite of a co-dependent. We don’t like needing help nor asking for it. Well I was given some serious Emotional Fitness homework a few years back, that I gotta admit, really SCARED the shit out of me. I was genuinely SCARED, more than I have been since the early days of m recovery back in 1995. I observed myself really struggle physically, spiritually and emotionally at a whole new level.

My violent alcoholic father died aged 49 of a sudden brain bleed with a 26-year-old hooker at his side. On a morning back in 2017 I found myself laying on the floor in my own vomit with a blinding pain shooting through my brain I wondered if I was living my last moments. I was helpless on the floor unable to get up. I lost strength in my left arm and leg my eyes were open but I could not see. I was pissed off as I lay there. I always defer to anger as my primary coping mechanism. I feel safer being angry than allowing myself to admit I am sad and SCARED shitlesss. I could not stop my tears, my head felt like it was exploding in more pain than I had endured during childbirth. For the first time in my life then at age 53 on the floor I wondered to myself …

“Is this it? Am I about to die?” Surely Mother Nature and Father Time would let me see my next book come out in October, why now its only February! I am not ready. I pray and meditate every morning so this morning had been no exception. Whenever I am SCARED I talk to the trees, the sky, or the sparrows. On that bathroom floor as I could hear my husband calling the ambulance I sobbed and I prayed. I am not sure if I said to quietly or aloud …

“Please not now, not like this, not like my dad on the floor, not after all this work surely I get more than 4 more years than he got.”

An ambulance was called, I was hospitalized overnight after a multitude of tests and an overnight stay I was sent home. The numbness eased from my arm and leg, but bruising and swelling under my eye started appear. Maybe I hit my eye as I fell t the floor? The following days it felt like my brain was jelly. It just didn’t work properly.

Not being able to write and process my fears also really SCARED me. I tried to handwrite in my journal because I couldn’t look at the brightness of a computer screen, my brain hurt. But my hand was too weak, my writing looked like a preschoolers scrawl. All I could do was sleep and be present to how SCARED I had been in those helpless moments.

“Life is under no obligation to give us what we expect”

I needed some revision homework on that universal truth it seems.

You see when I was wedged between a wardrobe and a wall back hospitalized in a psyche ward in the early days of my recovery back in 1995 after being clean and sober for 16 months I was really SCARED then too. The sewerage of my past hit me like a toxic tidal wave without my buddies booze and drugs, rendering me a shaking mess like a Vietnam Vet having survived a war. Child abuse survivors like myself survive invisible emotional wars and we suffer chronic posttraumatic stress like soldiers do. In my helpless state in that hospital back in 1995 I was pissed off with the universe then too, big time. I was clean and sober but felt fucking crazy and I was in a loony bin to boot. So I decided to offer Mother Nature and Father Time a deal. If I didn’t lose custody of my two sons I promised on my sanity, that I would spend the rest of my days living clean and sober. I would also use my writing to become as emotionally transparent as I am able to help as many others as I could in my lifetime that were as SCARED as I was about doing life clean and sober.

So far, so good.

“Life is under no obligation to give us what we expect”

Beautiful Barb used to say this to me often. However in my arrogance back in 1995 I did expect my Universal parents Mother Nature and Father Time to keep up their end of the deal. Naïve I know. As I write this I see my own ego was negotiating with a Universal wisdom I really know very little about.

My ego it still seems still likes to try to negotiate with forces far greater than itself. But it was not just my ego this time, but my heart also pleading from the bathroom floor for my destiny to be different from my dads. He died suddenly without warning at 49. I was only 53, when I passed the age of 49 I exhaled private relief that maybe I was rewriting history by getting myself into recovery. I was hoping that living clean and sober would mean I would get more mileage out of my life.

Who knows? Maybe I will, maybe I wont. None of us get any guarantees.

So todays Word Vitamin reviews what we do when we are SCARED.

What do you do?

There was a time that I would drink, drug, blame, shame, deny or just run. On that floor I could do none of these things. I just spoke to the Universe pleading for more time unsure of what was going on with my usually reliable healthy body and brain. All I could do was surrender to the reality that I was not in control and I was really, really SCARED. In hindsight as I write this now sitting feeling almost normal again at my computer my ego is fighting to delete it all and not to post it nor to admit to any of it.

“What a sook, what a drama queen, a lot of people have a lot worse things happen, no-one wants to hear it.”

And maybe that is what you think too. I don’t blame you. However, my heart is in charge of my writing not my ego. My ego tells me I am weak for admitting to being SCARED. My heart tells me I am human and as I admit my fragility and share my truth I also give others the opportunity to self reflect too. Well at least that’s my motive for writing and sharing with you today.

My husband needed to reschedule over 30 client sessions that were pre booked that week, which he did with great efficiency. He also posted a little notice for me on my home page knowing my commitment to my Daily Word Vitamin followers means a great deal to me. So I also wanted to take the opportunity to thank him for being the amazing rock for me that he is. I also wanted to thank all of you that posted such warm and supportive messages.

So I just wanted to gently massage this message home because it was a challenging lesson I needed to learn. We all get SCARED from time to time even though our ego fights it and calls us names, our heart has a right to speak up and ask for help and share how we truly feel. So moving forward lets remember together that …

“Being SCARED isn’t a sign of weakness, not admitting you were SCARED is”

Lotsa love Cynthia xxx