Emotional Pilates

A friend emails me and says, “I want new insides”. I tell her, “Me too.” This is one of those days that I just want relief from the fear. After all this time, years of recovery, therapy, healing and I get blindsided by fear. It happens that I am home sick today—an “experiment” my therapist calls it: Take time off and take care of yourself. So I cancel my weekend plans and I take this day. I get a massage and I read. The boyfriend calls and he says “Go to New York” and I think, “He wants me to go away.” I check my email from work and the bookkeeper says, We need more money”, and I think, “This is it, I’ll get fired.”

But I go for a walk and I wrestle with the angel of fear: Fear wants me to believe that bad things will happen. The shred of recovery that I have today says, “Hold on”. So I talk back. I pray. I think it through. There is some relief but these muscles are weak. This is like emotional Pilates. I have to strengthen my core beliefs. My habit is to succumb to the fear. But I make a tiny stride, a tiny advance this time.

Here is what I come to: I am determined NOT to be run ragged by fear even if the thing I fear actually happens (which it never does: get fired, man leaves me, friends desert me) it is still better than living in fear.