Again, just make sure you take care of yourself. There's only one of you.

Hey girl, I had to run over here and see what you wrote today! Once again, I know where you are coming from. I too have let fear rule my life. Trying to get beyond that now. It is not easy. Sometimes my daughter and I talk about this, all the trauma, etc that I lived through, and she thinks that I "dwell" on it. I try to explain to her that I don't, but that the fear, the memories, never go away; they are right there. I can't speak for you, but I can tell you what I think. A lot of people experience fear in bits and pieces, shall we say. For myself, basically I lived the first 17 years of my life with my fear, no, actually terror, not just switched 'on' but running flat out. I lived in a war-zone, where fear, brutality, mental cruelty, were common place. Literally living from one day to the next with the fear that it would start all over again, and it usually did. I lived that way for 17 years, feeling that my mother's and my sibling's and my life could be snuffed out any moment. Because my father threatened to kill her all the time. Being a child, having a child's mind, the next thoughts were that if he killed her, he would bury her, come back and kill all of us, so no one would know that he had done it. I wish I could say that I can laugh about that now, but I can't. Because things like that do happen. I just know that I do not feel 'safe' when I am around other people, out in public, or in a situation where I can't control what might happen to me. I don't want to control anyone else. I just don't want someone forcing their will, on me. The random possibilities are what gets me. The fact that anything could happen to me, at any time. People may laugh, but in Oklahoma City, that morning that people went to work, dropped their little ones off at the day care, said goodbye, and walked into history, they didn't suspect their lives would be snuffed out like a candle at the Federal Building. Those people of 9/11, didn't know, didn't suspect either. My God, you can't even go to McDonalds and be safe. That is precisely what scares me. But here is the other side of that story. I am 55 years old. I have never gone white-water rafting, caving, rock-climbing; things I have wanted to do for years. I almost drowned as a child. I don't know how to swim. Literally, I don't. I have sat at the edge of life, dangling me feet in the water, terrified of jumping in and drowning. I don't want to die, having not done things I have dreamed of doing. These restrictions are prisons of the mind, as surely as if I were behind bars, it is a prison. Guess who holds the key? Someone very dear to me tells me what fear is: F alse E ducation A ppearing R eal I am still here, walking and breathing. The majority of phobia type fears the unreasonable fears, have not happened. We are shortchanging ourselves out of living. I haven't walked in your shoes, nor you in mine, however we have shared the same path at times. The really big questions are these. When we cross from this life, into the next, what regrets will we have? Will the price we pay be worth the hyper-vigilence of the 'what could happens"? I already know the answer. You are a remarkable woman! Take care! Leanndra