thanks to discussions with my friend lizzie, I have had some new realizations.
i had known of my dad’s anger and displeasure toward me and my siblings actions. i wanted to avoid those at any cost. i came to know that as flying under the radar. if i could fly under the radar, i could avoid the wrath of dad. this was a continuous and exhausting struggle. those times i would do something wrong, no matter how small, I’d pop up on the radar and be in fear of what ever retribution would come my way. It was never a lesson except through retribution.
how is this fear any different than the fear the wild rabbit feels, afraid of the next time they are to be chased by a wolf or coyote, with in inches of their life? in both instances, there is this living in fear of something that may or may not happen. with this constant fear, the adrenal gland constantly works over time. that’s hard on the body.
all of this came into focus from a simple and obvious statement; living in fear = not safe. it is so obvious, i had never realized it before.
the above and more comes cascading out of that statement. i had this vision of a somewhat idyllic childhood. Sure, i had my struggles, among them my dysfunctional family and the gifts that came from that, but leaving childhood i felt somewhat well adjusted. Also, so does the rabbit but still, when they hear a branch break at 50 feet, their hair trigger response tells them to run.
on this statement alone, living in fear = not safe, causes the crystalline structure of my supposed idyllic childhood to come crashing down. i now sit in the broken shards, in full recognition of my early childhood along with some of the outcomes because of it. i, like the rabbit developed to hair trigger response to run. why run? because i like the bunny, don’t feel save.
sitting in the shards, an answer to a long standing question comes into focus, “how with this supposed idyllic childhood, do i face such emotional and depressive struggles?” the answer comes clear; there was no idyllic childhood. i now have a better understanding of the reasons for the lack of foundation that i hoped would serve as a basis of handling life’s struggles.
will i ever feel safe again? likely not. the early childhood’s experience are pretty difficult to overcome. even if i could, there still exists this safety robbing fear is part of just about any higher life form. even with that, thanks to you and my friends around me, i can learn ways to handle it and hopefully make for a better life. is failure inevitable? sometimes. i will close with a self authored meme, “failure doesn’t make me less of a human…it only makes me human.”
facing off with the big d 