i'm afraid to say it but, today, i am grateful for fear.
oh yeah! that nasty thing that holds us back, keeps us alive, turns on lights, checks doors, closets, and under beds, and pulls covers over the head. fear!
originally, fear is a great thing. it's supposed to keep us from doing stupid things like jumping off high places, talking to strangers, playing with animals that can kill us, wandering around in the dark, and hiring clowns for birthday parties. we as humans, well, we are not that smart as a species. we own poisonous snakes and spiders, strap ourselves into chutes and bungee cords and dive head long out of airplanes and off of bridges. we own animals that can eat us. we hire clowns! really!? what is wrong with people!? i can see the animals, i love animals. i won't own something that can kill me. . .or has eight legs. no legs is fine, but eight? not so much.
although i am not afraid of heights, actually love them, i am afraid of falling from great heights. ok, not the falling i would mind so much, it's the sudden and rather messy stop at the end i have a problem with. even with that minor fear, i would love to go bungee jumping and skydiving.
clowns. clowns are evil! here's the story of how i overcame my fear of clowns. ok, it is a rational and important thing to be afraid of. i mean, clowns are not to be trusted. i have, however, overcome my urge to scream and run; or destroy, shred, and burn so it can't come back to get me. see, i can be rational. let me first say, most clowns are fine. we went to the circus, no problems with those clowns. but, we went to a museum and they had a seriously creepy clown that played music there. i took a couple pictures of it for my friends that like scary clowns. they are sick and twisted and wrong . . .but that's why i love them. point is, i didn't hide from it like i would have several years ago.
my husband and i had been married around 3 years. he liked bringing home stuffed animals and such and throwing them in my lap. one day, he came home and threw a rat looking clown in my lap. rat is fine, love them, raised them, no problems. the clown part of it freaked me out though. i jumped up on the back of the couch and stayed there for a very long time. it laid on the floor and stared at me. my husband went into the kitchen without even noticing and proceeded to make something to eat go out the back or something. no i dea. i was rather concentrated on escaping the bringer of death he had just tossed into my lap. a grenade would have been easier to deal with. i finally talked myself down from the couch. i was too afraid to leave the stuffed clown. i was afraid to turn my back on it. not kidding. logically, i knew it was just a thing, not alive, no threat. but, somewhere in my head, i also knew that it would kill me if i made it mad. i wouldn't let it out of my sight for weeks. i literally carried it with me everywhere. i was starting to get it under control. the my husband brought home some even creepier clown statues! way to be observant, dear. this time, i decided that i was not going to be controlled by my fear. i couldn't be. at first i just stuck them in a closet. that may seem like no progress, but in my head, it was an insult and may anger the clowns. yep! this is how rational fear can be. then one day, something fell and broke one of them. i freaked out! all kinds of totally non-logical things went through my head. against all my fear, i took the other one and busted it into pieces as well. i smashed them both and just threw them into the garbage. this is so stupid! it is so ridiculous! it is insane to fear something that isn't alive. but, many fears are not rational. that was the beginning of my fear battle. i am still terrified of such clowns. still terrified, absolutely terrified. but, the rational has taken over. i have had to give the control of this section of my life over to the front, conscience part of my brain. the back subconscious still thinks they are going to show up in the middle of the night.
so, now that you know my psychotic fear, why am i grateful for it? well, how do we grow if we are not challenged? what challenges us more than our own irrational fears. often, we suffer alone thinking that no one else would understand, other people might think we're crazy. i have admitted and overcome. the start was deciding that i wanted the power back, then giving myself permission to be weak. no one wants to admit they have problems. the ironic thing is that we all have them. usually, the biggest problems the ones we don't want to admit to the most, are the ones that are the most obvious. yes, we have some hidden ones, and we shouldn't be afraid to admit them. i had to outright explain my fear to my husband. he didn't understand, and he thought i was nuts. whatever. he has some irrational thought processes of his own. who doesn't? whether fears or just weird psychological "needs", we all have them. overcoming the stuff that holds us back is the battle we should be fighting.
that's my gratitude for fear. my gratitude for the growth that has come from them.
i hope you can identify, admit, fight, and overcome, and grow from your crazed, scary, illogical, bizarre, hidden fears.
because i have overcome, i want to post the pictures i took of the scary clowns. they are not actually that scary to me anymore. i have spent a few hours editing the picture and working with it in my zazzle store to make products out of my fear. i actually have found the friendly in it finally. but, i am warning you, incase you're scared of clowns too. that's what is coming up. what i've been working with mostly is the face shot. yup, i just had to get up close and personal so i could share with some friends, and just because i knew i could.
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