This Is How Fear Feels Exactly Like An Ex

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Fear. It’s like that ex-boyfriend that won’t stop calling you. You know it’s wrong to answer when you hear that dreadful ring, but you do answer, every single time, against your better judgment. Fear plays dirty too. Just like said ex, it lingers in the background and once it gets even the mildest scent of your happiness, it swoops in to take a giant metaphorical crap all over it. This is its job, and it would seem that the more you allow it to lurk its way back into your head, the more difficult it becomes to get rid of it.

Every time you answer fears knock, you are silently reminded that the result is always the same, and no matter how much logic you try to place around it, you still let it in. Fear is as much comfortable as it is scary and comfort is one emotion that we can’t seem to compromise. Like your past lover, fear is there to poke and prod at your every movement ensuring you question your ability to make decisions and your ability to think for yourself.

Like that time you wanted to try for a new job, the stakes were somewhat unclear and you had a lot of questions, but you still remained hopeful that what was around the bend, may just be your next stop to happiness. But, thanks to that little voice that whispers negative things into your ear, you talked yourself out of it…again.

For every time you thought you knew what you wanted and had spent precious moments convincing yourself you were worthy, fear showed up out of nowhere to bump you back down again. Its haunting presence made you nervous and uncomfortable and for those reasons alone, you and fear become one again.

Like a nasty ex, you let fear continue to cloud your vision and stop you from seeing the good in everything and the positive walk toward your future. Instead of telling fear to take a hike, you take its hand and let it guide you into the abyss, making the same errors, time and time again. Your friends and family have caught onto your weakness and they are quick to point out that this emotion is the only thing blocking your view from what is truly attainable. But you don’t listen to your friends and family, fear has spent too much time already making you think they are crazy. Only you and fear itself know what it is really like to co-exist.

You remember all the fights that you had with fear, like that time you decided to kick fear out of your life. Your walls came down, you saw the light and for a brief moment you began to believe what everyone was telling you about fear. Their voices were loud and powerful and that strength propelled you into a whirlwind of bravery and brashness. You felt you would never be conquered again, but like so many times before, fear snuck into your bubble and told you that you were wrong. It hugged you and promised you a safety net for your doubts.

There is no telling how long you will put up with fear. You have stopped and started your relationship so many times that to say you have lost track of your record would be an understatement. You deny to your friends and family that you are still spending time with fear. Realizing that everyone around you has found out your secret makes you feel inferior and instead of trying to justify to them why you allow fear to come back into your world, you begin to only justify it to yourself.

At some point or another, fear is going to really hurt you. Only this time when fear knocks you down, it won’t be as easy to get right back up again. Fear will become so use to your inability to stand up for yourself that it will become more aggressive, forceful, and mean. It shouldn’t take something terrible to make you realize you have been so naïve, but ultimately if you keep succumbing to fear you will become numb to its poison.

It can take you so long to finally realize the damage that fear creates, and even longer than that to see that fear is heartless. Just like that crazy ex, it doesn’t really care how you feel, or what you think. It takes comfort in watching you miss out on new opportunities, new relationships and any potential growth in your life. Fear wants you all to itself and so far you have succeeded in letting fear win. Don’t stay in a relationship long enough with this fool to miss out on so many other great things. Have a conversation with fear and let it know that you have had enough and that its attempts to hold you back after all that time have finally failed. And if that doesn’t work, change your number so that nasty jerk can’t call on you ever again.