Another Beginning

This isn't a story, so that you can feel sorry for me. That is not what I expect. I just want to explain.

I know that there are so many more difficulties in this world that people have to endure.
I have always felt a deep guilt for how I have spent so many days, disabled, by my "condition", when there are millions of people in this world who would die to be in my shoes.
The whole while I was trying to escape my own skin.

My mother always told me to focus on other peoples problems, to think about people that have real things to worry about. She hoped it would distract me from wallowing in my own fears.

Im not implying that she was short with me, or impatient. Without her I don't know how I would have arrived here today, or even if I would have. Period.

You see, I have spent years analyzing, disecting, fighting, bargaining, praying, crying and exploring this crippling fear that has consumed me. I have come to some conclusions:

1)Your fears, problems, and feelings are all relative. You can't compare your reaction to someone elses, or your problems to anothers. You feal, react and function in relation to what you have felt, endured and experienced in your own reality. If you cannot commit to your feelings because of guilt or doubt then you will never be able to confront them, and own them.

2) It's ok, to not be okay.

3)You cannot explain to someone what it is like to have a phobia. Unless they have in someway or another experienced within themselves the complete and terrifying power that the mind can hold over your ability to reason with reality.
The more you explain to someone just how many aspects of your life are completely altered by rituals and techniques in order to avoid some type of mental trigger, the crazier you will seem. People don't understand that a rational and sensible person can fall victim to their own mind. I think people can be unwilling to accept that there are things about us that sometimes we cannot control.