Fear

You know what I fear? Salad! Not eating it - I love to eat salad. So when I was much younger, I started making salad for my family. Mom thought I made such good salads that to this day, when I go home, I'm the one who's asked to make the salad...and you know what? There are just so many salads a person can make in a lifetime. I now HATE being known as the "salad lady" and as much as I love to eat them, I resist making them at all turns, and as far as I'm concerned, salad-in-a-bag is the best invention ever! Here's why:

In my youth I was a good student, a nice kid, a reasonably well behaved daughter, a good sister. As an adult I've held many interesting jobs, I've traveled and been a community advocate and volunteer, I've been a valued friend, a wife, and now a single-mom; I've raised two beautiful children and still, what I'm known for is making salad?! I desperately fear being the "salad lady" at the end of my days; "Well she made a heckuva salad!", they'll say.

Recently I was at the pharmacy picking up heart medication (which is another scary story altogether). While was observing some of the elderly customers, it dawned on me that I have lived my in fear of a lot of things (most of them not having anything to do with lettuce & tomatoes.) You probably wouldn't think of me as fearful: I am active and even adventurous at times! I like the outdoors. I kill spiders. I go out a lot. I make new friends readily. I go to school, I go to work, I have two beautiful children, and have loving relationships with my friends and my family.

However, not one of those things is enough for me to be able to say I no longer live in fear. In fact, fear has written most of my life story; I feared being average so I wore the latest fashions (which looking back was really kind of brave!). I feared being alone so I assimilated to whoever's likes or dislikes I wanted to be with at the time. I have always said I fear failure that's why I don't try new ventures; but truly I think I fear success more, because then people might expect it of me all the time. I feared being a boring, average, cubicle dweller so I took the "higher" road, got married, had kids, became a stay at home mom (well, it seemed more interesting or at least more relevant than corporate purgatory at the time.) These fears were easy to detect and to admit.

Now timidly, but bravely, I must ask myself; What is the fear that REALLY haunts me, the one that keeps me chasing my tail around and around, so that I can live in denial of it?

Today I put a face on the fear, it was a cranky old man, crippled with arthritis and not looking happy at all, very average in every way and I found myself wondering - What is his legacy? What is his story? To be honest, it didn't look like much very interesting had ever happened to him, or because of him. Maybe it had, but I thought, 'I do not want to get to the age where I'm incapable of creating something marvelous only to look back and see a trail of discarded ideas and dreams because I was too afraid to follow through.' The old man in the pharmacy made me realize that I fear not leaving a legacy; not having a meaningful story to tell at the end of my time on earth. Yet, instead of working to create that legacy I spend so much time just "doing" and running in circles around that deepest of fears, my time to manifest that legacy is running out.

A legacy, the way I define it will entail work and risk...and I, up until recently, haven't been much of a risk taker. I'm busy with work and school. I party with friends and go see shows. I've raised two awesome kids. I've made and kept friendships. Big deal. So what? After I'm gone, my children are gonna say what to their children?: 'Yeah kids, you're Grandmother was sure a social butterfly, and everybody like her salad!'.

I have a friend who is absolutely paralyzed with fear. In every way. She is fearful of being in love, yet she fears being alone for the rest of her life. She is fearful of succeeding at work because then she might have to live up to somebody's expectations. She is fearful of letting her true emotions show because then she might have to admit that she feels pain and loss and betrayal and guilt and grief and anger (all those not-nice things we think and feel that very few of us are willing to admit). Sometimes she's even fearful of leaving her house because she might run into someone or something might happen. (But what if it were something great? Like getting a job offer or seeing an old friend or finding a hundred bucks?) I have often thought, 'How sad that she lives in such fear'. Well you know what? The only difference between she and I is that my fear just doesn't put on a very obvious face. My fear is so deep and is so intense that it hides very very far down inside of me so that most times I forget it's there in my busy-ness -and oh how convenient that is - until it shows up and knocks me for a loop into self-loathing and regret and depression; but then I put on my big girl panties, make a salad, and get ready to go to another party.

How do we fear less? I believe that first and foremost we have to trust ourselves. I don't. Not yet anyway. I've made so many mistakes I fear making another. I trust others far more than I just myself. I trust them when they tell me they love me, and I trust them when they tell me that I might not be very good at this or that. I trust them when they tell me I'm always 'SOOO cheerful', and I trust them when they tell me I don't need to be anything more than what I already am. So, in order to conquer my deepest fear, I am going to have to learn to trust myself because clearly most of these folks are full of s*it! No offense - It's what we all say to each other, and it's what we all want to or need to hear.

Listen, if we can survive, not necessarily conquer, all of the things we fear, even if only some of the time, I say life has been a success. I do feel my life, in most aspects, has been successful, but I do still want a legacy. And I want to know that I can survive success, as well as I've survived failure; survive love, as well as I've survived betrayal. I want to truthfully say I've lived my life without regrets and not be full of crap.

In the meantime, if "salad lady" is all I've got, I guess it's o.k. At least it's not "open the beer with her teeth girl"!

It's been awhile...

Disclaimer: Be forewarned that this blog will not be the stuff of Fairy Tales, or any tale for that matter...there is no beginning, no middle and no end...well at least not yet anyway! Afterall, I've only just begun (again)!

And I'm back to this blog once again. I wrote the next blog back in December, just never got it posted.

Hope you enjoy it!