Fear

Something that became obvious early on in my life was the extent that emotions dictate what people do and say.  As a young person, at least until the age of 5 or 6 I was captive to my own emotions in the most negative way.  The environment of my home seemed threatening, scary and hostile.  Not all of the time as I did feel affection, but I mostly felt wild emotional responses that made me anxious most of the time.  I figured maybe this is how all adults behaved, that I was doomed to allow fear, anger, jealousy and depression to guide my life.  As the world became more accessible and other kids parents caught my eyes and ears it seemed like some adults somehow escaped to be led by thought rather than feelings.  That appearance was like a shining light on my life.  Even as a small child I had experienced despair in the thought of losing what little control I had over my actions when this adult curse took over and I was pray to these negative emotions that guided my parents every day.  A determination set in to lock the negative ones out and concentrate on laughing, feeling thankful and loving life each day.  I saw adults that somehow made it and so I figured I could too.
Little children see the world very literally.  Things either make sense or they don't.  This quality seems to have stayed with me all of my life.  I suppose that I still look at the world with wonder like I was that little boy  trying to figure out why the adults in my life behaved so strangely.  I was seemingly always in trouble.  Sometimes it was due to being a joker, sometimes I just asked the wrong people the wrong questions.  Many times I acted out in really stupid ways.  Looking back I can see why I did some of the things that got me into so much trouble and have watched my own children do some of them.  At any rate I was on a path to eliminate negative emotion from my life. 
Some goals are much harder than others to achieve.  While on this path I have managed to become a really positive person.  I wake up happy and go to bed happy just about every day.  Of course life deals us ups and downs and we lose people, we deal with tough things, we even self destruct sometimes by acting out stupidly.  But overall I came to see that by the realization of the negative effect some emotions can have we need to master them.  I got really good at that too.  Balance could be achieved.  Awesome.  The world seemed to open up and I understood things so deeply.  There was a cost.  Watching people go through meltdowns and act like nothing happened, or worse yet have a made up recollection of the actual event made me curious.  Unwilling or unable to see the truth.  I remembered that line from a Psychology class I took in college.  I learned that I had actual empathy.  What I call the ability to look at something from another person's  point of view, not feeling sorry for them, that's something else altogether.  There it was, empathy, the secret to just about everything I had ever looked for.  True empathy is the rarest quality I have come across in all the folks I've met in my lifetime so far.
The one thing that really escaped me was how to control my own empathy to where I would insulate myself from the people who let emotions rule them.  These people are toxic.  They consume everyone around them in their negativity.  I thought my strength could help heal them and that led to many years of very difficult relationships.  I learned to be very careful.  I never again want to spend one second hostage to that type of person.  It was impossible for me to let anyone get that close lest they reveal some hidden weakness that takes over and if I'm involved past a point I'm stuck to ride it out due to my own stubborn weakness.  I think that last sentence shows how nuts thinking about this stuff makes me.
I came to the conclusion that love between a man and a woman did not really exist.  In another section of the blog I explain this in detail.  In a nutshell I came to believe that in these relationships the word need should be substituted to more precisely describe the love people profess to feel.  Man was I ever sure of myself.  Then I met her, the one that blew all of that away.  This girl was even tempered and didn't want to waste one second on crazy emotional stuff.  I was in love with a woman!  I am in love with a woman!  She is really the perfect girl for me.  We both have our issues, we are human, but they are so under control compared with what I've seen in others.  She is afraid of ending up with an alcoholic and I'm afraid of ending up with a controlling unbalanced basket case.  Neither of us is close to that but every once in a while the fear takes over.  We are at a point where we've talked about living together, engagement and marriage.  I really love her and she loves me but I can't help but wonder how life might change.  Now we have at least 2 days a week apart and I miss her.  I wonder if that short separation is the secret to success?  Not many things scare me but I have to admit women do.  I am a real weakling when it come to females.  Now I'm actually in love with one and just when I get super relaxed and comfortable with that, something happens that scares the shit out of me.  She seems like she goes through similar ups and downs.  We've both had two very hard marriages and possibly that is where the actual fear is coming from but I don't really know how to feel about all of this.  We can actually talk about things and she is no doubt my best friend.  I tell her everything.  I will surely let her read this.  The trouble is how do you talk about something that you can't really describe?  She tells me "I'm just so afraid of ending up with a drunk"!  I ask her if I'm a drunk and she says no but continues to tell me of her fear.  On the other hand I've got my fear and from what I see she's not an unbalanced woman yet I continue to fear that.  Are we going to be able to get past this?  She's been writing about her perspective and maybe we can read each others stuff and gain some insight?