More Faithful to Fear

I have been more protective of the moment, more intent upon not disrupting it, and so have been less faithful to the future, keeping it instead at a distance and postponing its becoming present time. Betsy thinks, and rightly so, there is no need to wait and worry about its impact (which in the fantasy is always negative and so needing more to be deferred). She think things are done by doing them, that they then have an opportunity to work out and be adjusted to. They can then prove themselves undeserving of all that fear.

I believe she is right and that she has been, but I am more faithful still to the fear. Hope and trust are not as available as I might wish. I am faithful also to the sadness, perhaps because it has been so long with me. It is no longer what I sometimes have, having become over time who I am. While good things happen I do not trust them, as I do not trust moments of happiness. They are not as familiar or as reliable as the darkness has become.

That has, I think, always been with me. It is confirmed, rather than created, in sadnesses that now occur. In the darkness there is familiarity, but it is the satisfaction death might offer with its finality. There is no ready inclination to go beyond it and making it such a final or absolute state (one of essence rather than what sometimes occurs) has limited consideration of more hopeful options.

I have been again dragged to a point where I can accept goodness  and begin trying to trust. It is no one else's choice and until I do I stand in the way of others who may go around me, but only with difficulty. I wish sometimes they would go around my sadness and go on seeking what I do not see, but I would miss them too. I want them to be free, but not so free that they leave me. I want to them to take me along, but to also leave me where I am. I wish they could thrive, but I expect it to show also how low I have fallen. I would like to say, "Go away, and go with the happiness that belongs in your hearts. Go, and don't look back, but I want them where I can still see them too."

I would be as pleased if I could avoid this choice and could settle into this partial life that is more familiar, but this is not as simply done as it had been and I know I can no longer put the choice outside myself. I either trust or allow another aspect to die. I wish I were less fearful but to be so I would have to act in a courageous way. I would have to do what I can to encourage hope and trust growing in lives other than my own, but that is the easier part. It is me who is the reluctant disciple of trust. I can show other people where freedom lies and I can even look out in that direction, but going there, doing rather than just thinking about it, is unfamiliar ground.

To say I am stuck, to say I feel trapped sometimes in this darkness, to find reasons to support doing nothing (or nothing just yet) is to avoid rather than postpone wellness and the prospect of being happy. I know that as I know other facts. How I acquired this debt to pain and how I determine sadness was so essential I am not sure, but even though they have been present or hovering as far back as I can remember, I still have choices.

I would be O.K. to go beyond the resolve, to think of life as more an answer than dying might seem, but it does call for more action than thought, for doing rather than deciding to do, and instead of writing it asks that I stand up and try hoping and trusting no matter how risky they seem. What is actually at risk is not so great compared to what instead might be attained. Stop waiting to be free.