Fear

Throughout this journey fear has been a strong emotion that continues to bully its way into my story. Fear of pain, fear of the unknown, fear of the memory, fear of loss, fear of sadness, and fear of irreversible change wander in and out of my head freely. This raw emotion comes on quick and hard, and sometimes morphs itself into anxiety, stress, or even a panic attack at its worst.

Fear emotions are not new to me and I've become pretty good at pushing my fears deep down inside instead of dealing with them in a healthy way. Let's face it, it can get ugly when I choose to look at those fears when I'm not ready for them. Throw a traumatic injury in there, along with worry and doubt and you might get one big shit storm of unhealthy emotions. I need help, been needing help for awhile to get over these fears of mine.

Recently though, as hard as I try, I am unable to push my fears down deep enough. The relentless pain is a constant reminder and literally I can't hide my swollen ankle from myself and are forced to look at it every waking hour. I might try to cover it with a scarf or blanket but the steel rods will peek out or the scarf will fall off. But the crazy thing is, the more I look and the more I accept the pain, the less power fear has over me. The more I think, the more I contemplate, the more I embrace, the more I accept, the less fear I have. It looks like I got my help.

If you would have asked me three weeks ago if I would be able to handle the fear of laying in bed with a severely broken ankle, steel rods screwed into my bones, open fracture blisters, all the painful procedures associated with my injury, all while praying for a fast surgery I would have laughed. There would have been no way. I've come a hell of a long way since June 4th, 2014.

 Fears really are just made up in our tricky complicated minds. When we no longer have fear, we can begun to live.