Fear is a funny thing. We are born with instinctual fears. Many come later in life as we grow and learn what it is to really love. Fear paralyses us so that we can no longer move. Constantly treading water but not going anywhere. Eventually you get tired, give up and drown. For this reason alone is why we are given such a vast array of other emotions that will pull us through, that will make us start swimming for the shore that we know is off in the distance, the hope of once again getting on stable ground.
We all know fear but we all experience it in different ways. I personally will be afraid, then angry; the anger helps me on my way to get back to normal, gets me moving, makes me refuse to be a victim. I forget how useful that is. Some people don’t get angry and therefore don’t get moving. The worst is to realize looking back that it was you holding yourself back.
Recently what was holding me back was changing jobs, changing states, selling my beloved house, and leaving family. It took a while, and some marvels of chemical science but I am back to almost normal and with out fear of these things. I completed all and I survived though I never thought that I would. When you just focus on the next step and completing just that one thing before you worry about the next, you move farther than when you stop and stare into the distance.
They say that there are 4 stages of grief, well I think that there are the same stages of fear. You need to go through these in order to get back to where you are in control. But you must also let your brain tell you when it’s time to stop feeling sorry for yourself and your situation and to start moving. You must be willing and want to start moving. With out will there is nothing.
I have been doing a lot of soul searching and healing of my own grief and fear. Going through fertility treatments at 25 is something that I never thought in a million years that I would have to deal with. I never expected it to be this hard to try to get pregnant but I never truely expected it to be easy. It took my mom 5 years and 3 miscarriages to have me, which is why I am an only child.
On the cusp of jumping into the so called “deep end” of the fertility game I find that I am much more rational and thoughtful about what I am doing or planning to do. I have as of late found an inner peace that I never thought in the first few months that I would feel. I can rationally and with out emotion really examine and probe the painful parts of what I have been dealing with for the last 18 months. Finally I can see the whole topography of my situation and I am finally with out fear.
Part of me still fears that I will never be able to give my husband the child that we both so desperately want, I fear his tears when he really considers for the first time that this might not happen but now that my own heart has healed a bit more I’m better able to comfort him as he realizes what I realized months ago. This just might not happen.
The saying “When the going gets tough, the tough get going” is pretty brilliant if you stop and think about it. When things get hard (and they will) the worst thing you can do is stop moving forward. If you don’t keep living and keep working toward normalcy you become stagnant, a victim of your own inactivity.
No one knows what tomorrow will hold, it could be beautiful or painful. The one constant is that life will continue to move, with or with out you. The only decision you have to make is whether you are going to let go of your fears and be apart of it. We only get to go around this ride once, why waste any time of it on fear?
