5 things from the0lady

[ailbhe]

1. Fear, and how it bleeds from its legitimate origins to poison every area of a life
Huh. Poison. Not quite how I see it, I think. Unless I wholly misunderstand.

But yes - when you spend most of the time afraid of genuinely frightening things, being afraid becomes a habit. Depression is similar; retreating into profound loss-of-sensation depression is a reasonable thing to do under certain circumstances, but doing it once means one is more likely to do it again.

And the only way I know of to stop being afraid is to go and do things.

So far, I've done the crash-into-it-keep-walking-until-it's-over method of overcoming fear for *counts on fingers* *gives up* sex, ice-skating, meeting horses, meeting dogs, meeting people, going to new places (used to fear entering a shop I'd never been in before, now I can go to whole new countries without much trouble, though nightclubs are still terrifying), cycling, all sorts of things.

It's tiring sometimes.

I think one of the oddest things about fear is that being safe makes it more intense. When I was poor, I wasn't afraid of getting poorer. Now I'm rich, being poor is terrifying.

Hah. "Feel the fear and do it anyway." But only if it's something I want to do.

2. Being very shy very loudly

I love people and talking to people and listening to people and arguing or discussing with people. I feel very strongly towards people - in particular, I love a lot of people very dearly, which isn't a socially acceptable thing to say - and really enjoy being in groups of people I love or admire.

And it makes me feel very sick and like an irritating imposter whom no-one could possibly be interested in, and they are just doing it to be kind, etc.

Pretending to be fine just made me feel worse, so now I just tell people that I'm not fine, and in general that works very well, especially for people whose companionship I really care about.

The other way of being shy loudly, rather than telling everyone about it, is to pretend not to be shy and to leap into the middle of social groups with one's confidence and sense of entitlement spilling o'er the boundaries of one's personal space much as a J-cup bosom spills over a B-cup bra. However, this leads to people whose opinions I actually care about genuinely finding me annoying and phoney, so I don't do it unless I'm scared enough to revert to adolescent behaviours.

Which I sometimes am.

3. Disestablishmentarianism (pro)
*Goes to look it up on Wikipedia*
Ah! I can't be having with State Religion. Ugh. (I'm glad I looked that up, I thought it meant something broader).

4. The ethics of everyday living
Everyday living is where ethics happen. I mean, it's where everything happens, more or less. I have a somewhat driven conscience; I've taken my mother's (and, come to think of it, my great-grandmother's) basic principles and just added to what they always did or didn't do. I don't want to do things that make me feel like I could easily have done better, caused less harm.

Learning that I also have a responsibility of self-care has complicated things somewhat, but in real terms made them easier.

5. Compromise
Hah! I think I am not good at this. At least, I often feel that I've either given in gracelessly or been a big bully. But without compromise there is no meeting of the ways.