Fear and The First Day

I have a few friends going through hard times, changes, transitions, some with major life over hauls, and I have noticed they have all been talking about needing to find courage. I, queen of constant change, have offered such platitudes like "it has been with you all along". I like to channel Glenda the Good-Witch or some other person who can say something more eloquently then myself. The words I use to try and comfort are carefully selected, but I know they are just words. I'm not going to write some dissertation on finding inner peace on someone's Facebook post. I have tried before and people usually don't read it but say thanks.
It is easy for me to look at someone else's struggle and judge how easy it would be for me. Because I have  an "S" on my chest, right? Having trouble getting over a man? Easy peasy. Living alone for the first time in almost 2 decades? Girl, being the queen of your castle is the best! Losing everything you have worked for? Done it a few times honey, life goes on and it will all work out.
I have been many places and have several shirts to prove it. The things that scare you probably wouldn't scare me. For as many times as I have done things where I should have wound up in a morgue, I'm pretty sure that I'm supposed to be here for the time being and therefore, not really scared of dying. I have some emotional dysfunction where I really don't think I can allow myself to love (don't worry, I have a therapist who gets paid to listen to the crap in my brain) so not being in a partnership is ok for the time being. If someone leaves me, I have plenty of experience with that and can shut it off (most of the time to my own detriment). So I must have a corner market on this life problem situation, right? Well, I thought this for a while at least. Then I had to do what genuinely scares the living shit out of me.....

Give up control.

This is my greatest fear and I battle wits with life to keep the upper hand. I use strategies and look at all possible outcomes to make sure my fate never rests in another's hands. I preemptively strike and store away resources to make sure I can do it alone. I will not give up control.
There are many reasons why I behave like this. But the readers digest version is that I have trusted the wrong people to take care of me in the past and it never really worked out well. To quote Fiddy: "The only ginger I trust is me."
This has a lot to do with my personality disorder, and I work on it. Most of the time my control issues go unchallenged. I have created a good system. But then I started the process of putting my son back in school and I noticed I had anxiety for the first time in months. Not the situational anxiety that comes from a stressful situation, but a pervasive weight on my shoulders. Heart palpitations despite resting. Sense of impending doom and the urge to pack up and leave. Feeling like life was sand sifting through my fingers. Constant headaches. Nothing touches these bastards. This is typically accompanied by paralyzing fear. Suddenly I realised what I am afraid of.

Putting my son in school.

Giving up control over what happens to my son (who can not tell me what happens during his school day) is terrifying. I watch the news, I am informed. If someone hurts my kid I will do jail time. I already have it planned out, assault doesn't carry a long sentence for a first time offense. Anyway, giving up control is extremely hard for me. Like probably as hard as living alone may be for one of you. Or losing your job or partner.
Sending  my son to school may seem like a silly fear, but the root of this fear is deeper than leaving my son in a classroom. Yours probably has a deeper core than your current situation as well. We all fight different demons, but the courage still comes from the same place. Just like Glenda told Dorothy at the end of The Wizard of Oz: you had the power all along. (Sometimes I think a magic glitter wand would help) I need to dig in and find my place of letting go. That is courage for me. Your courage may look different then mine, but it is terrifying regardless. Quick tip from the collector of been there done that t-shirts, what you are looking for IS inside you. Nothing else can provide the courage you need. No person, no bottle, no pill, no job, no food. I have tried all of them, and some were a lot of fun! But I never found what I needed. If you still need to figure that out I will love you regardless, and be here once you are done.
I am linking a TedTalk from a lady who speaks about coming out. She uses her situation to illustrate a problem that every person faces more then once in life, and she is much more eloquent and far funnier than I ever hope to be. Her message goes far beyond her specific situation and I have watched it numerous times to remind myself that I need to throw grenades. Hope you enjoy.

 http://m.youtube.com/#/watch?v=kSR4xuU07sc 

And here is a picture of me so I can post this to pintrest.

Remember that one time, at band camp.....

So I have a few posts that I am not confident in publishing. A piece I wrote last year (and have since deleted from this blog) stirred up some people. It is not hard to write from a personal perspective, but it is challenging to publish it. Normally I wouldn't mind stirring people up, but when you are writing about your feelings and experience it is always subjective and always leaves you open to attack.
I have thought about the goal or purpose of this writing. I write for myself often, and I have been content keeping it to my self. In the social networking culture we find ourselves in everyone has an important opinion and feels the need to voice it, regardless of how self centered or myopic it may be. I don't want to be the blogger mom that posts about how June Cleaver I am, or how Martha Stewart my Christmas tree looks, or how amazingly I have raised my child in the absence of hardship or struggle. I couldn't write like that even if I wanted to! 
The title of this blog is Evolution of Erica. It reflects my change in behavior, speech, views, coping strategies, etc after leaving a Christian cult. During the time I have been exploring this transformation it has become clear that my need to defer decision making to someone else began long before I met the family who brought me to that church.
Where does one begin when I am still uncomfortable recalling memories, let alone sharing them with the world at large? I think sharing our experience with others seems to be lost. We don't get together with friends to talk, we check our news feed. We have long conversations where facial expressions and body language is missed and emojis are a poor substitute. Some people don't even talk on the phone anymore. We miss out on the human contact and experience behind our keyboards and screens. We are able to keep up the facade of a happy little life with carefully selected photos, status updates, and threats of unfriending if you don't take the unflattering photo down. This is a manner of behaving that I had no trouble adjusting to once I left the cult. But to be honest I became good at that at a much earlier age. Being authentic is hard. Opening up is hard. Learning what to say and who to say it to is difficult. Like most other lessons I have learned, this came to me the hard way. While I am not publishing my deepest thoughts or closely held secrets, I still think sharing our stories and experience is a worthwhile and noble pursuit. Many people I talk to express a frustration with life that is common no matter what the background. Being human is a communal activity, it can be accomplished in a vacuum, but just like using the microwave cooking directions, it may not turn out the way the way you thought.
So here I am wasting a beautiful day in my hot kitchen trying to type out a post on a touchscreen keyboard. Auto correct is the bane of original thought, in my opinion. Why am I doing this? Because I believe if we share our experience we will see the world as a more friendly place. We will see more in common with our neighbors and coworkers than we did before. We can help others by lowering our walls and saying, "Me too!". We are not unique. I have not experienced one thing in my crazy life that has not happened to a single other person.
So this isn't a deep post with some altruistic message. This is my mission statement for this writing experiment. I want to share my experience because I can help someone feel, even just momentarily, that they are not alone in their experience of life. And that ties into my belief that our collective purpose as human beings is to lessen the suffering of others.
Thanks for reading and stay tuned for my thoughts on courage.