Feeling Fear

The very thought is an automatic recoil, right? I've been sequestered, hiding, drapes drawn since last week. I think I've figured out that it's because last week, in therapy, I finally got in touch with the place where I had always hidden fear. And it's out!
I have felt like a terrified 3 year old since then. It's automatic with most people, I believe, to try not to feel fear, to avoid and sidestep it whenever possible. I can't do that, anymore. My cavern of fear is chock full up to the top and someone has stumbled in and left the door open.
I'm scared. I'm afraid that someone, anyone, a stranger walking by, a person I know and trust, is going to hit me in the head, grab me from behind or knock me down. Every minute I'm watchful, nervous and wary. But, you know what? Truth be told? I spent hours like this, days like this and weeks feeling terror in my skin crawling, muscles twitching and clenching and the urge to duck and cover my head even when there is no one in the room.
Admitting your scared was never allowed. Showing you were afraid invited ridicule or pain. I just hid it inside, so no one would see. And, I guess, the hiding is over.
It doesn't feel good. By any stretch of the imagination feeling scared is awful.
I have a choice, laugh out loud, I think not, about whether to try and to restuff these feelings or ...sit with them, allow this torrid river to flow and experience all I kept hidden from myself.
I don't want to. I don't want to but, yeah, I have to do things I don't want to to get better.
Sorry for the vile graphics...it feels like being skinned alive, as if someone has a bottle of acid and is slowly pouring it up and down covering every inch of me, it's like being in a blizzard and being pelted by a non-stop barrage of burning ice chunks, it's like standing alone on a mountain top and waiting for that push you know is going to come, it's watching a truck roll over back and forth over your toes and you can't stop it you just watch and wait for it to be over; it's like being trapped in a room that's on fire and the windows and doors are locked and someone is laughing from the outside.
Fear is being pummeled with fists and being forced to say nothing; it's wanting to yell, to scream, to tell someone but there is a knife at your throat; it's being thrust into an anonymous crowd by someone you love and watching them walk away, never caring, never even turning around; being alone in a room beside a whip and a chair and waiting to hear the footsteps that always come; it's being set adrift in a boat with no oars by the one person you thought loved you; it's being told how worthless you are and how you won't ever amount to anything and no one will ever want or have you because you are ugly, pitiful and damaged goods.
Fear is thinking everyone else can see your worthlessness and they hate you and are free to strike, to slap, to grab whenever they want. Everyone is actively trying to hurt you because they can see that you are weak and deserving of it.
Fear hurts because it makes you withdraw, climb inside yourself, cry and whimper to yourself and you fear letting anyone see...what they have done to you and how deeply they harmed you and how truly damaged you are, a piece of discarded garbage, nobody wants, nobody wants to see or hear or touch or be near.
People enjoyed inflicting fear, looked forward to it...it made them smile, after all.
Fear feels bad. It's all shaking, queasy and wet. It's the melting of hardened, old feelings. It's the opening of a smelly, musty, stench sweat chamber that's been hidden for 40 years.
The fear is part of me. It's pieces of my past that are now free to roost.
God it sucks sometimes