It is Always the Fear that Feeds...

I never thought of fear being food like...until the other day.  Someone said fear was the food that fed her character defects.  And I thought, “well, fuck if that isn’t true!”

Fear is the root source of all my larger issues.  Fear of losing what I have, fear of not getting what I want, fear of not being accepted, fear of being accepted. When I really examine this whole fear thing, what I find is that it is pervasive, ever changing, and completely contradictory!  Something that I fear today can be completely absent tomorrow and then boomerang around and blindside me Tuesday.  (It is always fucking Tuesday, by the way!)

I have heard said that the opposite of fear is faith.  And while that seems true.  I am not a believer that you can’t have faith and fear at the same time.  I do, every single motherfucking day.  I might be swimming in fear about one thing and in complete faith over pretty much everything else.  I think the opposite of fear is safety.  I am not in fear when I feel safe.  And safety is a much more complicated situation to secure.  Fear is easy, it just resides below the surface of myself, forever ready to be activated and triggered.  Safety is something that I have historically not provided to myself or others.  Behaving in ways that are super not safe and provide security for no one in my immediate vicinity.

Faith and love can help with providing safety but I will tell you I have felt both of those things and been completely, totally un-fucking-safe!  So for me, safety is the opposite of fear.  What I need when I am afraid is safety.  And it took me a very long time to understand and accept that I am responsible for providing that for myself, first and foremost.  And then to others.

I am not sure where I got the idea that all of you were supposed to be highly concerned with my safety, but I did.  And it took decades for me to completely accept and then change the idea that I AM RESPONSIBLE FOR TAKING CARE OF MYSELF!  I AM RESPONSIBLE FOR MAKING MY SAFETY AND WELL BEING FIRST AND FOREMOST!

Well, given this information, my life trajectory makes a lot of fucking sense...I got all the fucked up shit that I did because I was outsourcing (or trying to) an inside job!  I am embarrassed to admit that I really just figured this out in March.  Yes, of 2025.  It hit me upside the head while driving across New Zealand.  That kind of bolt from the blue that changes everything.  One thought and then a pervasive expanse of sweeping change.  That is what happened for me.  It was life alteringly cool. And a little weird, and super late on arrival.

I am learning, slowly, haltingly and somewhat stubbornly, that just like the food I choose to eat, I can fill it up with empty calories that only leave me with a craving for more crap.  Which in turn leaves my body wanting and never really sated.  Or, I can fill it up with good things that nourish me on a cellular level.  And feel full, complete and satisfied.

It is fear that feeds everything else.  So I can continue to heap it onto my proverbial plate, or I can change it up and cut fear down in a harvest of self care.  Everything works out. Whether I freak out about it or not.  It all works out.  I have to do a couple simple things and then my life not only makes sense but is a really, really good life.  I have to stay sober.  I have zero chance if I drink or drug.  It is game over, even if I keep feeling like I get extra lives.  I can keep putting quarters in to prolong the agony, but I have already lost.  So I got sober, and now I maintain that sobriety with all that I am.  It is the most important thing in my life.  So I have to do that, every day and when I do this, every day, I get to lead this amazing beautiful, relatively fear free life.  Because this sober life requires me to inventory the fuck out of myself on the daily, and that is how I keep fear from growing out of control and choking the life out of me and all my happiness.

Fear feeds the wounded, broken and lesser parts of me.  And for me, only safety, my own and others, can really do much about that.  So my life today looks like a hard and steadfast commitment to safety.  For myself and others.  I want to be a source of safety and security for others.  And because I continue to do the work, stop thinking that someone that is totally unsafe is ever going to become something else.  That lesson took me a very long time to learn...but I think, fuck I pray, that I finally got there.

Fear feeds.  But safety nourishes.  There is a difference. It might have taken me a very long time to know this subtle, but important difference...but I fucking do now.  And that has made a huge and lasting impact on how I live my life.

Again...still.