Old Fears For Sale

Fear.  Totally sucks.  And is useful if you know how to use it.

I was feeling particularly fearless today but then I remembered Ouija Boards.  Do not fucking put me in a room with one of those things.  Ouija Boards are from a special hell even I believe in.  Awful.  Anyway, not the point.  The point is today's theme was fear.

Even fear is useful when you figure out what you're afraid of and why.  Once you identify the problem, you can come up with ways to fix it.  Otherwise it's just this gigantic, nebulous thing that hides in the closet waiting to kill you.  And kill you it will whether you let it out of the closet or not.  Fear is super sneaky like that. 

But if you face it...if you acknowledge and confront it then you take away its sneakiness and also its power.  Fear hates that.  When fear is found out for what it really is?  It turns into ketchup and old lunch meat and weeps in a corner.  Fear is way more scary with backlighting and a good soundtrack.  Even knowing that, you still couldn't pay me to watch a horror movie.

I'm not saying, "don't be scared."  That would be too hypocritical even for me.  But if you ARE scared will you please take a moment to figure out why, I mean really why?  Same for angry, sad, lonely, depressed, helpless, hurt, whatever?  Because before you stuff that feeling down with whatever your tamping tool of choice may be, you should know that there is a reason that feeling is there. 

Just like they say in the military how pain tells you you're still alive...it does.  That pain of unpleasant feelings tells you you're still alive and there is a serious thing you need to face if you want to stay alive.  So face it.  Open the closet door.  Most likely you'll find that closet stuffed not so much with monsters but with mismatched gloves and old shoes and other things you forgot about that take up so much of your space and energy.

Dad update: His counselor has given him homework to be more tuned in to his emotions and less about escaping into his intellect.  So far, all the emotions he feels are fear and anger. So that's not fun right? Right. But he's "trying" to feel those. But it's still not fun. So I said that if you face your fears instead of running away from them, they go away (or not go away all the way, but you can deal with them).   This is not new information.  I swear, HE was the one who told me this in the first place.

So he said he's trying to confront them.  I said No.  You're not.  You are only THINKING about confronting them. You aren't actually confronting them.  Because they're still there.  And that's the problem. 

It's like you've opened up the closet door a little bit and all this shit has started to fall out and you can't stuff it back in. You're saying, "Oh god, it's so scary.  I can't see all of it, but I'm sure it's really fucking scary.  I can't deal with how scary this could be."  And you think closing the closet door is dealing with it.  It's not.

I know you think you are the most broke broken person who ever lived in the world of broken people who are broke.  Doesn't matter how you try to fix it.  Can't be done.  Guess what.  You're not.  You don't suffer from terminal uniqueness.  All you have to do is push the tiller.  Guess what.  It rolls.  So too, will you.  Eventually.  When you find the right way to push it.  It can be done. 

And other stuff about how when you finally open the previously mentioned closet door and deal with the crap you haven't wanted to look at for howevermany years, you can say, "Hey, I forgot I was hanging onto this crap.  This belongs to someone else."  or  "Wow, my cherished memory.  Aww.  Thankgoodness I finally retrieved it from ruin." and you either give it away or put it someplace special depending on what it is. 

And that is kind of what a hard-hitting Junior Counselor to the Free World session looks like.

It's Spring Cleaning/Yard Sale time, people!  Old fears for sale!  Four for $1.