A bear's life

I have my period, I’m tired and the weather really pisses me off! In short, I’m in “bear-mode”.

Tony always calls me bear. When I asked him why, he said: “You walk like a bear (really?), you growl like a bear (yeah, okay) and you’re cuddly like a bear.”

This weather also makes me hungry like a bear. My body thinks it’s autumn and time to prepare for hibernation.

Earlier today I burst into tears watching “Freddie Flintoff goes wild” when he has a close encounter with wild elephants in Borneo. My heart longs for experiences like that. To feel alive, really alive and in touch with nature. Instead I’m busy trying to sort out my job situation and studying for an exam. I try to take myself for walks as much as possible but let’s face it: walking along the river Thames past a herd of cows is not the same as meeting a herd of elephants in the jungle of Borneo.

A bear needs to live in the wild and this bear’s paws are very itchy from walking on concrete for far too long.

Fear vs. Trust

Can you have trust and fear at the same time?

While I reflected in my last post on my natural trust in other people, there seem to be other areas in my life where I definitely lack trust and am actually quite fearful.

Analysing that more carefully, most of these issues seem to come down to a lack of trust in myself.

Damn it! I somehow knew I would end up here – again.

What is it with us women and this lack of confidence in our own abilities?

Or more precisely, what is it with me?

I tend to think of myself as quite self-assured and quite open to taking risks but to tell the truth, there are still many areas that seem far too far out of my comfort zone. Unfortunately those are the areas where my heart longs to go to the most.

I guess we all have our own comfort zones and limits as to how far out we trust ourselves to go.

Personally, I think I’ve come to a point where it’s time to push that limit again.

I’m terrified, though.

Strangely, however, right now, I’m glad Tony isn’t here and that I am alone in this battle with myself because I’m able to hear myself more clearly. I’m not influenced by Tony’s thoughts and opinions. It’s just my mind and my heart.

Whether that makes it easier or not, we’ll see. I’ll keep you posted.

Trust and security issues

I had to complete a personality test the other day and one conclusion of the test evaluation was that I “prefer to think the best of people, giving others the benefit of doubt”. The report suggests that having a trusting nature can have its downsides.

Can you be too trusting?

I remember a situation when I was about 16. I was standing at a bus stop on a busy road waiting to get the bus to see my friends a few miles away in another town. Suddenly two men stopped their car in front of me and asked me where I was going. They both had long hair and as I was into rock music at that time and most of my mates had long hair I saw them as members of my “tribe”. So I told them where I wanted to go and they offered me a lift.

Now someone less trusting than myself would have already hesitated when they noticed that instead of a backseat there was only a bed kind of area in the back of the car and the only way to get in or out was through the driver or passenger door.

I, however, didn’t think anything of it and happily hopped inside. They started driving and we chatted about rock music and the best places to go out in the area. After a while, one of the guys asked me if I wasn’t scared getting in the car with two strangers. After all, they could be up to anything.

That moment was the first time the thought of danger entered my mind and suddenly the chemistry of fear shot through my veins like lava. I tried to play cool and said that I’m not scared and can look after myself (or something stupid along those lines while clearly proving that I couldn’t as I had gotten myself into a situation that I couldn’t get out off easily because I had no access to a door).

Anyway, they kept driving towards where I wanted to go and although they were driving a bit silly (e.g. racing towards a house and stopping just before hitting the wall), they dropped me off exactly where I wanted to go. They wished me well and to have fun with my friends but they also reminded me to be more careful next time and not to assume everyone was as nice as they were.

I will never find out if they had bad intentions and changed them during our journey or if they genuinely just wanted to give me a lift.

That moment of fear and the realisation that things could have gone terribly wrong certainly stuck with me for a while and I wouldn’t have done the same again. I also never told my parents.

I tend to think that trusting people is a good thing and I trust in my own ability to judge people’s character. I’d also hate to live in fear and distrust. It must be a horrible way to be and I think it attracts bad things. Actually, research suggests that fearful people with a victim kind of energy are more likely to be attacked than others.

But last night, when the thought of locking the front door - now that I’m on my own in the house - entered my mind for the third time this week, I remembered the report’s suggestion and got out of bed to lock the bloody thing.

This morning I get a phone call from my bank’s fraud protection department telling me that someone tried to take money with my card in Bangkok - probably due to the fact that I never cover the keyboard when entering my pin at an ATM.

Should I be more careful or keep trusting?

After all, nothing bad ever happened. Something bad could have happened – but it hasn’t!

Maybe I’ll find the answer to that question tonight before going to bed when I have to decide again whether or not to lock that front door. The problem is though: once you started giving in to fear, it’s hard to go back.

Settling

I’m feeling a lot more settled today. Something shifted during this full moon, I think and I have come out the other end seeing more clearly and feeling calmer.

One observation I made is that being in a relationship and having someone around takes the edge off things. Sometimes in a good way but sometimes more in the way in which a strategically placed piece of furniture covers a hole in the wall. It stops us from seeing cracks and holes in the fabric of our lives as well as in the way we relate to ourselves. Tony has only been away for about three weeks now and we still talk every so often on the phone but it certainly made me realise a couple of things about myself and my life already.

For example, that I rely on him to ground me. Great when he’s here but he's not. As much as it sounds romantic to say that someone “completes” you, I’m not so sure that it's actually a good thing. There’s this element of need and dependency that I don’t like. Surely two people who are already complete on their own can have an even better time with each other.

When Tony and I first got together we always used to say to each other:  “I’m not with you because I need you but because I choose to.” I don’t think we’ve veered off course too much from that but we may have started to rely on each other a bit more over the years.

With regards to cracks in the fabric of one’s life: I was certainly right with my assumption that any dissatisfaction in other areas of my life would stand out even more when Tony isn’t here to smooth it over. Experiencing that was unpleasant but ultimately very helpful. It helped me make some decisions that were overdue. Who knows how much longer I would have tried to just ignore it while hiding in a bear hug?

No. It’s all good. Things have been thrown up in the air and now they start to settle nicely.

Running like a hamster

Today I’m fed up. I feel like a hamster in a hamster wheel: busy running without ever getting anywhere.

It feels like this is how my life has always been and is always going to be. The mountain of things to do is growing and growing and no matter how hard I work I don’t ever seem to catch up or get on top of things. It sometimes feels like someone purposely designed it that way. To keep us busy and stop us from thinking too much. We might decide to want more out of life if we stopped and thought about it. Hell, I know I do!

I feel one of “my phases” coming on. I could quite easily just leave everything behind and run off somewhere. I don’t care where to or how it’s going to work out there as long as I get a break from all this. Flippin’ heck!

Would it make a difference if Tony were here? I don’t know. I’d probably just get angry with him for reminding me that running away isn’t the answer.