What to Do with Fear...

Ok, so today is the day. Surgery day.  And I am awake at 3 am.  

I am anxious, I guess.  I have all kinds of fears about not coming back.  About doing this thing for purely ego reasons and my punishment for being so vain is that I do not get to come back to this life.  This is an old tape that plays in my head.  I don’t deserve.  I am not worthy.  I am too much or too selfish or whatever...too vain.

And while I would love to say these old tapes no longer have power, they do.  I am afraid.  I am worried because I really want to come back to my life.  I love the life I have today.  The people in it, the love I have, my mom and children, my animals, my friends, people who are currently present in my life.  I love this life and so when presented with the possibility, however remote, that I may not come back...as much as I would like to deny it, there is a place within me that that particular fear lands.

But I am walking through it anyway.  I have done the work, the analysis, I have talked about it at therapy ad nauseam.  This is something I have wanted for decades.  DECADES.  This was not impulsive or compulsive (had a talk with someone yesterday about the difference between the two...). I know what I want and I am going after it.

Risk is part of living.  We are all only here for a little while.  Which is why it matters so very much what we do with this one precious, wild life (Isn't that right, Mary?).  That we show up for those we love and care about them through our actions and words to the very best of our ability...

I have been a selfish ass in my life.  I have done my best to ruin my life.  I have failed to appreciate all the blessings I have received.  I have taken things and people for granted.  I have loved to the best of my ability which was crippled and maligned most of the time.  But fuck if I haven’t tried.

And all of my efforts make me no more worthy than anyone else, or any less.  I, too, just have to move forward with what is presented to me and do the best I can with what I have.

I have heard it said that fear is large and looming but thin.  So very thin.  Worry and doubt appear so large and impenetrable, but in reality, when examined more closely, they are just thin membranes that we walk through.  Portals of living if you will...

So it is no accident that I undergo the knife today on this 1111 portal.

I am seeding the new, improved me with good intentions and a nod towards using all this good juju today to usher me through something I have been afraid to do for a long time.  I own that I am afraid and I will do my best today to embrace it and let it go.  To trust which has been such a very hard thing for me to do in this life.  Trust myself.  Trust you.  Trust the process because all I know to do with fear or longing or vanity or anything really that comes into our orbit, is to find a way to learn what we can from it and then move forward trusting the great and expansive benevolence that brought us this far.

I pray you too may have a life changing 1111 today.  That you are also able to walk forward in your own life with whatever makes you afraid.  That you can find the resolve and mettle to tackle those fears and walk forward into living your best life one mother fucking day at a time...

Again, still...