Facing Fears

Someone once told me that the root of all negative emotions is fear. Anger, frustration, sadness, whatever... that if you dig deep enough, you will find fear at the root of it.
Personally, since hearing that, I have found that to be true in my own life. Sometimes you have to dig pretty deep, but usually there is fear waiting to be found. Waiting to be dealt with.

We all have fears. We all handle them differently. Sometimes we face them head on, charge into the midst of them, fight the good fight, and conquer them. Sometimes we run away, run, run, running as fast as we can in the opposite direction. Sometimes we simply pretend like they're not there. Ignoring them as best we can, pretending they don't exist, doing our best to block whatever triggers there are out of our minds.

There was a period of time in my life when I spent years dealing with various fears. Some battles take longer than others, you know. It was rough. It was tough. It was the most difficult period of time in my life to date.
I'm not proud of how I handled everything during that time period, but I am a little proud of one thing: I dealt with it. I faced it head on. As difficult & painful as it was, I faced it. And I believe I am a stronger & better person for it. Oh, it wasn't easy. Not at all. Not by any means. I cannot understate how difficult that period of time was. But, like I said, I'm better off now.

But, I don't always deal with fears so easily. I'm not much of a runner (no pun intended), but I am one heck of a deny-er. It runs in my family. The women in my family are the queens of denial. And so I deny that there is a problem. Ignore it. Ignore my fear. What fear? No fear, right? Wrong.

And so, as I sat in church this past Sunday, and the preacher spoke of how thru Christ we can conquer anything, and I examined myself to see what there might be that needed conquering, I finally came to terms with it. Fear. And so, besides the prayers that I have already said asking God to help me thru this, this blog is my first step towards conquering this fear. By exposing it. By telling all of you what it is. So {deep breath}, here goes.

I am afraid that no one likes me.
This is why I have built up my walls. This is why I went from having many, many friends, to virtually none. This is why I am often lonely. Because in my head, I think no one likes me. Not really. Not the real me. Not the deep down dirty me.
Oh, I tell myself, they seem to like me, but that's just the surface. Once they get to know me, they won't like me any more and they will leave.
And so to protect myself from that seemingly imminent rejection... I don't ever let anyone in. I've told myself that I don't want friends. I have family, who needs friends?
Even my old friends, friends that never did anything wrong, I pushed or pulled away from. Intentionally isolated myself.
I also think this is the root of a lot of my anxiety. I used to be fine in the midst of a crowd of people. Now my heart starts racing if there's just a few. Being in a crowd is a nightmare to me. I am nervous, my heart races, and I'm scared to death. For no other reason that that I'm surrounded by a ton of people.

The real truth is that I miss my old friends. I miss them terribly. I've tried to reach out to a few, but when plans fall thru or they don't return my call I tell myself they didn't really want to see me. They don't care.
When I meet a new person, who seems to be a potential future friend, I get all nervous. It's like dating all over again, LOL. I hope that they like me. I try not to seem to anxious. I try to show that I want to be their friend, without seeming overbearing. Did I mention that I tend to overthink things?

I miss having girl friends. I miss talking & laughing. I miss having someone to call. And now that I have FireGirl, I would love to have another mom to hang out with, go on play dates with, and just share stories with. But I just can't seem to get over that hump.

I'm scared. But I've recognized that, and I'm working on it. So maybe... one day... I'll have some real friends again.