Confront what I am afraid of

...in some parts of my life I am paralysed with fear and not dealing with things until disaster hits….I don´t know why I am like this or how I can fix it. I don´t want help either, I want to find the inner strength within.

to easter at alb’s ma’s. in fact i wish i could find some way to get out of it. alb’s ma’s new/old man had a stroke in january and is now in a care home and the opposite of well. alb’s mum is understandably sad and disappointed. and who wouldn’t be, having had their new chance of happiness thwarted so cruelly after just a few months. usually i’d look forward to escaping to meet up with friends for a beer and a laugh—but now they’re all pregnant and i can’t stand the thought of all their baby bonding.

but i have to go, we’re booked to babysit on saturday for one thing. argh.

I have conquored many fears in the last week alone! I think I am on my way to total freedom:-)
The truth is out now is so many different ways

i just read the last entry (and only) that i made on this goal, and i mentioned a friend that i had tea with, and that he was someone i felt close to and didn’t understand why. it saddens me because he is dead now, and has been for the past 3 months now. i think with time, a person’s death becomes more sureal. once the tears and funerals dry up, it almost seems like they just went on vacation, or you’re just out of touch. his accidential murderer’s statement today was: “i pray every day for all the families involved. i realize i will live with a sense of guilt for the rest of my life.”

lately i’ve been getting the notion that there is more to “this” than just simply people making choices each day. just as i finsihed reading the last entry noted above, my mom passed through my room notifying me of the atricle published about the man who is more than likely going to prison for manslaughter. perhaps it was just a coincidence, but it seems as if these coincidences happen more frequently with each passing day. if there is anything that i learned from my friend, it was that beauty really is on the inside, and that everyday you should smile and make the best of it, and to tell people all the time the way you feel about them no matter how ridiculous you sound… that’s what he did, which makes me believe he lived a fulfilled life. he was truely one of a kind. i just wish he knew how much i loved him. this hasn’t happened for quite some time, but i feel that gutteral pressure rising up within me before i break into tears.

i guess my fear is: letting people really become close to me, and when they do, they abandon me before i can tell them how much i care for them. it seems like a dilema easily fixed… too bad it isn’t so.

confronting what you’re afraid of is so much easier said than done. for some reason i feel like things have been emotionally crashing on me all day. i was on such a good streak and all the sudden it seems like everyone is asking me “are you alright?” “yes” i say, and at first i really did mean it. slowly though it seems like even i was hiding the fact that no, things aren’t alright. why can’t i accept it and confront it? because i just dont want to deal with the skeletons in my closet. that is why, i think.
today i was having tea at one of my favorite places with a person i feel close to yet never spend that much time with. he asked me “remember the time you came over that night and we watched edward scissor hands until you fell asleep because your mom kicked you out?” i had no recollection. i was convinced he had mistaken me for someone else, but as things persisted on it made sense that no he couldn’t be making this up. it was even more alarming that i don’t remember it. i blacked it all out, i think. i never black things out, not even when drunk. ever since i feel like there are weights pulling at my heart and memories. i’m trying to remember, but i can’t. i guess there were more of those times. maybe this explains for why i feel so close to him? or maybe he really is mistaken and this is all an uncanny coincidence? i just don’t know. and not knowing scares me. what lies in this grey zone? and do i really want to know?

I’m not afraid of going back to hometown now.

i’m posting this here rather than under the work at home goal because i’m slowly coming to the conclusion that it’s fear that’s paralysing me. laziness, too, of course. but there’s a good part fear in there. fear of failure, fear of What Comes Next, and (now i’ve dropped so far behind schedule and have such a terrible, heavy, worthless feeling about the whole thing) fear of the job itself.

i used to be completely reliable, was Ms Reliable Translator, would always hand in my jobs on time (usually just in time, but that was laudable, even unexpected, in the academic world). worked hard, too hard, both as a freelancer and at my part-time job. was always battling with some deadline or other, then spending days recovering. so when i got offered The Book, i was pleased that i’d be in charge of my own schedule – would have a whole edited book to call my own (and it really is a biggie) instead of waiting for clients to deliver and then throwing myself at their texts to meet what were often ridiculous deadlines.

but it’s turned out that i am incapable of working to my own deadlines, incapable of organising my own schedules. basically, i was supposed to finish translating The Book in may. and even that was later than planned because i was initially incapable of drawing up a timeline for the contract (and didn’t do so until literally forced into it by personnel changes at the publishing house). i still have several chapters to go (all started, none finished). i have spent the whole day today with a chapter open on my laptop, hoping that it will magically finish itself, and doing anything rather than actually reading through that first sentence. i know that starting is the hardest part. i know that once i get into a chapter and start feeling i’m on my way that work gets so much easier. i know that i should just try to work for 10 minutes or an hour and see what happens. but it’s as if there’s a weight on my chest, a vital gap in my brain. i grasp at any excuse for not working – visitors coming and i don’t know exactly when. well, clearly, that means i can’t work at all. an emergency translation coming from the boss on wednesday. well, that mucks up my 4-day Work on The Book plan. clearly not worth working today either. i have a scary picture of the main author in my head. it’s like she’s watching over me in despair and exasperation. and i have bad feelings about most of the contributing authors who, in all honesty, seem to be a very strange bunch. few have bothered giving me feedback (ok, maybe they just haven’t got round to it because they too are pathological procrastinators – or maybe they’re just very busy), and a couple had nothing nice to say even though they only changed a few words in 60+ pages (which, irrationally, makes me feel unhappy about my translation). in sum, i suppose there has been a severe lack of positive feedback, and i guess i’m very dependent on that.

since The Book started getting out of control, other things have begun to slide. there are other freelance jobs i’ve started and never finished. this has financial implications as well, of course. my heart sinks every time i rediscover in my inbox a job i started (and got at least 75% done) in january, but for some reason never finished completely (the reason was, in fact, that i felt the text was, in itself, rubbish. but i was only hired to edit it, for goodness sake, not to rewrite it or have it win a blimming pulitzer prize). in the meantime, the person directly responsible for the project has left and the person ultimately in charge is literally dying. there’s another job i did and finished early in the year. but i failed to do another piece of work for the same organisation (not something i ever wanted to do, but i couldn’t say no…). i still haven’t written the invoice for the work i have done. i am embarrassed to write an invoice for something in the region of three thousand euros, for goodness sake. and as time goes on it gets more and more embarrassing. i don’t even know if the people i worked for last year are still with the organisation.

now this feeling of uselessness and paralysis seems to have generalised to my part-time job, where i have been less than productive over the past few months. same pattern again: start lots of things at once, can’t bring myself to finish anything unless it’s really short or the deadline is desperate, keep distracting myself, feel permanently useless and frustrated. in fact, that pattern seems to have generalized to life in general.

things have to change. i’m hoping that writing this all down here is the first step to facing my fears and getting the bloody thing done.

was not in fact a mole at all—it was an Alterswarze, otherwise known as a (this is great) senile wart
very common in the elderly, usually start to appear after the age of 40. clearly i am aging before my time. the nurse thought it was a hoot; the dermatolgist reckons i must be wise. heh.

anyway, i’m glad it’s gone. i knew there was something iffy about it—luckily it was good/funny iffy.

Am I afraid of anything? Not lately…. I am a car crash of doing things unafraidedly which starts to make me think that I am becoming too reckless and arrogant. Perhaps I should go back to being afraid. But if I don`t bleed then I don`t live.

confronting and trying to overcome my fearness of speaking in public,and I’ve got a little improvement,it’s just a little though.;)But I still ‘HURRAY’!