Nothing to Be Afraid Of

Another late summer golden dawn, the first where I had to put on a sweater to sit outside in the early morning light.

I woke up earlier than I wanted because I wanted to keep an eye out on Prince after he ate breakfast. He’s been throwing up again and my second-scheduled book launch at Stories is in just a few days. He seems to be keeping it down today, his eyes are brighter and he’s more interested in patrolling outside than staying inside and curling up around his stomach like he was.

8 of cups, I asked what energy to call in today, and I pulled the 8 of cups. It’s the card about walking away.

I’m on step 4 of 12 and I’m PMSing and my hair’s been either too dry or too oily from all the summer bleach and I’ve been noticing all the times throughout the day that I slip into self-pity. I can make summer ending all about myself and how my dead mother loved the sun and how I didn’t have enough fun, I just met someone that turned out to be another person that I would have to end up walking away from my feelings about.

I can get my own stomach churning so quickly with this shit, and it’s good for me to remember that I don’t have to get so carried away with myself and that Prince’s nausea is probably directly related to my gut-twisting fear.

I’m wearing a sweater that I bought off of Depop to soothe myself about the end of summer, to try to stoke the fire of anticipation for fall. It’s emerald green and cable-knit and still smells like Hollister even after washing it. One thing that I can enjoy about fall is the aesthetic of the studious witch.

Twenty minutes since he ate his breakfast, and I don’t think he’s thrown up yet.

I’ve been establishing new rituals and routines—so many of them. As many AA meetings as I can get to in one week, naps every day when I start to get myself riled up and ready to have a fit, reading instead of watching TV. Practicing prayer. And my before-bed routine has tightened up this past couple of weeks.

I’ve been doing EFT tapping from Brad Yates videos on YouTube (about 10 minutes) and then 15 minutes of silent meditation before I go to sleep.

Last night the algorithm read me accurately and suggested one of Brad’s videos called “Nothing to Fear”.

EFT or ‘Emotional Freedom Technique’ is one of those tools that doesn’t require much of you other than repetition and sincerity. I can be quick to write off things that don’t deliver immediate relief or radical transcendence, but I also know that the result of things that deliver hard and fast can be short-lived. I’m a fan of anything that directly addresses the nervous system. I appreciate Brad’s approach because he doesn’t just offer arbitrary hypnotic suggestions but begins each session with an acknowledgment of where you’re starting from, which is usually knee-deep in shit. He’s explained that it doesn’t make sense to ignore the shit you’re in if that’s what you’re trying to clean up.

I think in a lot of spiritual practices (my own included) it can be easy to forget that, especially when you’re hyper-aware of your attention creating the reality that’s headed. But anything that we feel but aren’t consciously acknowledging is dangerous, because an unacknowledged shadow will still produce highly tangible results in the outer world.

So last night the tapping session acknowledged feeling lots of fear, but also acknowledged that there’s nothing to fear, even (especially) in death. It’s a radical perspective and not one that I always swallow easily, but I love radical perspectives and I am, after all, trying to directly address my catastrophic addiction to capital-F Fear.

AA led me to ACA, or the Adult Child of Alcoholic or Dysfunctional Family 12 step program. While I could only sort of see myself in the traits of the hardcore alcoholic, I read the ‘Laundry List’ or the 14 traits that describe the Adult Child and almost every single one describes me.

I bought the big red book as they call the ACA literature and found a meeting to go to in my neighborhood—the first one I can attend is tomorrow. I love reading the book because it feels like I’ve finally found something that is addressing all of my issues that have felt unique to me.

But especially the ‘internal pharmacy’ they talk about that the ‘sober’ adult child can still get high from when they’re caught in their own webs of codependency and self-destructive love-seeking.

It makes me sad to really acknowledge how little I really love myself, even after all of these years. But that’s the kind of self-pity that I’m trying to get over, and if I didn’t really love myself I wouldn’t be at this place trying to get over it.

“Nothing to fear” takes away one of my last remaining drugs—stepping away from my addiction to the excitement of fear has already produced some withdrawal symptoms when I stopped dating a couple of weeks ago, but now I’m going yet another layer deeper and agreeing to stop giving myself giant doses of fear from stress and worrying.

When I cultivate this type of attitude I feel like there’s a thin but unbreakable golden band emanating from the center of my chest.

The sun is fully up now, and summer’s not over yet.