Fear

Fear

Hello and welcome. At this time you get to walk with me, as I take you along in a part of my life as a sexual abuse survivor. Please stay to the end, to enjoy my gem of positivity.

Fear is an emotion that I am well versed in. Although fear is traditionally associated with the colour yellow, for me fear is the colour green. Why green? Fear reminds me of the trees and grasses trembling in a cold wind. It is not beauty. It is shrinking away from a force which seems unstoppable.

I have lived in fear for most of my life. In fact, the first emotion I remember ever feeling was fear (at eighteen months of age). That was when the sexual abuse began. Fear has dogged my footsteps ever since.

Fear is invasive, affecting every part of the life of the person who is fearful. I know — it affects every part of my life. To me, fear is trembling, unsure of what will happen next. Fear is startling at every sound and action around me, never certain if I will be hit or raped again.

Fear is withdrawing from the world, in an effort to stay or be safe. But this is a false sense of security. Because life still happens, no matter how hard you try to hide. Let me give you an example from my own life.

Out of fear, I don’t leave my house. In fact, there are days where I even struggle to leave my bed and bedroom. But this action to deal with the fear didn’t work. It didn’t keep me safe. The man I fear most from my adult life, who I refer to only as Alex, recently found where I was living. He came into my house, the house I feared to leave. My “safe” place. And yet again, he raped me.

My fear had not kept me safe. All it had done was close down my world. It stopped me from living; I merely existed. Fear had stopped me from having fun, enjoying other people’s (safe people) company. Even now, fear keeps me from family gatherings.

When fearful, there are classic thoughts:

“I can’t do this”

“Something is bound to go wrong”

“If I just stay here, nothing bad can happen”.

But it wasn’t true. Bad things can, and indeed still do, happen. Fear had cut me off from joy, excitement, just plain being happy. But it didn’t stop the bad things from happening. All it had done was trap me.

My fear had made me a victim. My fear told the world that my abusers had won. My fear spoke the volumes that I was fighting to hide. So, how do I change my life from that as a fearful, trembling victim, into a strong survivor.

Well, first of all, no matter the extent of my fear, I am a strong survivor. I have lived through the abuse. Yes, I am a changed person, but I’m still here. I’m still breathing, I’m still thinking, and I can still make choices.

One of those choices is to fight my fear. I now know that despite my actions of fear, I can still be abused. My fear doesn’t keep me safe, which was what I thought, for the longest time, it did.

Despite my fear, I now spend time in places other than my bedroom. Admittedly I’m still in my home, but it’s a baby step. I now attend my appointments outside the house, willingly, and what’s more, with healthy expectation of the encounter with the other people I mix with. Admittedly, at the moment, I only see health professionals and some of my closer family. But it’s a start.

My fear is no longer keeping bound, tied to the abusers of my life. Now, I fight my actions driven solely by fear. Yes, there are many times I still give in to my fear. However, those times are getting fewer. The fears have actually increased, become worse. But I still fight them. And that is what a being a survivor is all about.

And now, what you have been waiting for. This time , I have chosen an affirmation:

I believe in my ability to succeed 

When stuck in the depths of fear, it has been easy for me to forget this. That I do have the ability to succeed, despite my fears. The more I believe that I can overcome my fears, the more I do actually succeed, and you can too.

Thank you for taking this brief walk with me. Please leave a comment on what you are doing to fight your fears; it may just help another reader. And until next time, breathe - and believe.