So it seems that this blog may be taking another turn in it’s continued evolution and I’m curious to see where this goes. I was so surprised by the response to my last post, obviously this was a topic that resonated with a number of people but I just wanted to say thank you for your comments and thoughts they mean a lot. That was definitely the scariest post to hit publish on that I had written so again thank you for being so gentle with it. I hope that these posts can be a starting point for conversation around topics that we often brush under the rug so please do feel free to comment and engage with them.
I’ve been writing this particular post over the last several weeks. Some of it was written outside while the weather has been lovely and hot, some of it mulled over in my head while sitting in the chair for five hours getting a tattoo, and some of it on my couch like I am now with multiple mugs of tea to keep warm because English weather can be stupid. I’m still not exactly happy with it but I think it’s time to stop fussing and worrying about if this all makes sense or not. So, here is a photo of Eltham Palace from the other week because I need to give you at least one pretty thing to look at. Lets get on with it.

I’ve been thinking a lot about fear recently, well perhaps not so recently as fear and I are old friends. As I spoke about in my last post my reaction to events of this past year have helped me begin to examine the why behind the emotions. I’ve grown tired of of my old friend that prefers to stay in the shadows whispering in my ear and wrapping icy fingers deep in my gut. I have decided that it is time that we sat down and really looked at one another, sitting knee to knee for a change so that I can stare deep into her eyes and examine the shifting faces presented to me so that bit by bit we can begin to say goodbye. It is an interesting conversation to have with yourself and the faces she presents offer up ghosts of past selves flickering across the wall like old movies.

What I have found perhaps the most interesting is that it has never been the big events of life that cause me to question or doubt. When it comes to major life decisions I have always had this deep sense of what the next step should be and this has enabled me to do silly things such as only apply for one university with no plan b in place should I not get in, or to pack up my life and move to the other side of the world with no real job to speak of and no place to call my own. I think part of this comes down to knowing the character of my parents and that they will always be there to support me to the best of their ability and the other part comes from my faith. It is far from perfect and often neglected but always there, a constant heartbeat providing a steady rhythm. That certainty, that peace deep down in my soul can only come from one place and it results in the fear attached to those big decisions being kept to the short stomach churning moments caused more by adrenaline than anything else.

No the fear that that I have chosen to sit down with comes from a different place, this is the fear that is the result of past hurt. A fear with a long memory tracing back through the years and those flickering past selves. I didn’t always have the easiest time during school…pre-teen girls can be cruel and minute class sizes magnify social discord. By the time I had reached high school the idea that I didn’t have a whole lot to offer in a friendship had become fairly well entrenched within me and was accompanied by a binge eating habit and a tendency to isolate myself rather than try and reach out to others and risk being rejected again. As always our inner turmoil is often vastly different to what we choose to present to the world and several years after graduation I spoke to someone I had known in high school and they were surprised when I mentioned how hard I had found much of that time because I had been ‘popular’. Never a word I would have chosen for myself I feel ‘social drifter’ would be a more apt identifier. On the fringes of a range of social groups but never fully part of them always an outsider looking in. I can only imagine how much worse the experience would have been if Facebook and other social media had existed then in the way they do now making the dichotomy between inner and outer self all the more extreme. I do not envy today’s youth.

As I look back through the decades and the distance that her and I have walked together the actual impact that she has had on my life becomes more clear. I can see moments that were missed and friendships that never were explored simply because I couldn’t make that first step. When you’ve become convinced that by initiating an interaction you are somehow inconveniencing the other person you default to relying on others to make the first move. This can make something as small as sending a text to see if someone wants to get together turning into a massive task as I deal with those leftover whispers of lies in my ear. The hitting of a send button marking a decision to refuse to listen this time around, calling her bluff as it were and deciding that actually I may be worth someones time after all.

When you place your worth or value in the hands of others it is inevitable that it will become damaged through careless handling. As I’ve been making this journey I’ve come to realise how much of mine I have allowed to be determined by these outside sources, fragile and reactionary with a defensive default. I still have a tendency to ‘work for approval’ and it can be hard not to transfer that into my faith. I genuinely do enjoy helping out and giving time to get something done isn’t a hardship, in fact it’s a side effect to all I’ve been through that I wouldn’t change at all. It is more being aware of the underlying reason as to why I am saying yes to something and responding accordingly. A few weeks ago at church I had one of those times where it felt like everything being said was for me and me only. There were four speakers that are members of the congregation each giving a five minute talk, none of them pastors and none of them having spoken in church before. While all of them spoke into different areas of my life one verse in particular is relevant to this topic. The verse was Exodus 14:14 where it says “The LORD will fight for you; you need only to be still.” 

Being still is super hard for me, I thrive when I’m busy and have a million projects going. While I don’t have a problem with being on my own, that time will usually be filled doing something most likely reading. This is probably why it’s taken moving across the world and away from all of the things that filled my time to finally acknowledge there may be some self-reflection I’ve been avoiding. Two years of being forced so far out of my comfort zone in other areas of my life that I’m finally ready to give in and look at this one as well. So it’s time to do this. It’s time to stop being so busy with work that tiredness is able to mask my loneliness, to actually be still with intention and to keep on chipping away at my old friends hold on my life with every click of a send button in a city where everyone is busy and you have to make the first move.