Posted 12/13/2005 8:30 AM (GMT 0)
Well, I'm still thinking. There are obvious connections--you kept loosing everything that represented safety through the faults of others--so that would make it hard for you to trust that anything involving others. Rather than admit fear of lose, it sounds almost like something in your brain is putting everything on fast forward--to get it over with and avoid fear.
I remember a short period similar to what you described. I saw a news story about a brand new subdivision of improperly built houses--city had just condemned every house in the subdivision. Many people spoke, but the one I looked at was a 90 year old woman, who said she had spent all of her savings to buy that house. Insurance wouldn't cover the loss, so she'd lost everything.
I had never handled loss very well and just before seeing that news show, I'd gone through the worse loss of my life. I was especially vulnerable right then, and it hit me especially hard. I sat crying for her and myself, thinking does it never end? and that I didn't want to live 50 more years if that was how things are.
Today, instead of a single lady showing and proving that life plays dirty tricks, we have the World Trade Center, Afganistan, Iraq, and New Orleans--showing and proving the world is not a safe place. That's a lot working on your already existing subconscious fear of loss.
The trick is of course to put those fears aside, but how is difficult to answer. So as always, I have a story, but this one is made up.
Lake People and Stream People
Lake people prefer to sit in the middle of the lake in comfort on a houseboat. They have kitchens, living rooms, bedrooms, all things to make life easy. If it rains they sit in comfort on their lawn chairs under a great tarp. They feel smug and happy with their choice for they have gotten far from the shore and from people or things which can hurt them. They are safe and pleased to be able to view the world around them.
Stream people use canoes. They live a much harder life. They have to take the canoe out of the water at night or when it rains. They have to make a shelter, start a fire, and cook what they find along the way. During the day they have to be on constant watch for rapids or falls and may have to take the canoe out of the water and carry it past the dangers. If rapids or falls don't get them they can be attacked from shore. So they live a life of viligence rather than safety and comfort, but they love the multitude of views of the stream, shore, the land beyond.
But life is not always made up of normal things. Lightening could strike the houseboat, start a fire, and sink it and all the belongings of the lake people would be lost, forcing them to swim to shore. Another lightening strike could hit the canoe, but the canoe people being the more viligent would already be on shore. They would have pulled out their belongings--and when the storm ended, they would simply build another canoe and keep on moving, ready to see and be part of more.
End of story
So the point is that people who move through life, may have more work and less ease, but they have strength. There is a permanance to them, that comes from within themselves--not their possessions.
That elderly lady whose house was condemned was a stream person. She said, I lost everything. She did not say, like the younger ones had, what am I going to do? She did not say like the younger ones had, who is going to help me? She just stated the fact--not sad, not self-fortifying--just this is where I am. She was in the stream--even at 90. In fact the story is about her and the lake people, who were also interviewed.
The sense of loss and fear of loss you feel is as real as it can be--and it will stay that real as long as you stay a lake person. You have made decisions, like leaving your home when you were 16 and not marrying that first young man, that show you were a stream person then.
You may not have been happy, but you jumped off your mom's houseboat and out of the one you would have had with the young man--you got in the stream. So we know you know how to survive in the stream. That makes me wonder if you are seeing a lake and houseboat in your future and sense those bigger dangers, bigger losses.
So considering what you have said and what I have written, I would guess that the fastest way for you dump the fears, is to start thinking,
I am a stream person, I can handle whatever comes my way.
Good times to say it to yourself would be at bedtime, when you hesitate to make a decision, and when fear crops up. I don't know that it will work, but it did help me.
bev