I'm Afraid of Fear

I was in the kitchen heating water for my herbal tea infusion before yesterday's meeting - and, let me say, there's always fricking coffee ready but apparently our feckless morning secretaries can't plug in my fricking hot water pot, goddammit - when one of my woman friends said this: "I had a dream last night and you were in it."

I thought, quite smugly: "Goddam right I still got it."

She continued: "We were traveling around and we were going to A.A. meetings everywhere we went."

I thought, somewhat less smugly: "Why would I think I now had something I didn't ever have when I was still young enough where having it would have been at least plausible?"

Fear:  An unpleasant emotion that arises in response to perceived dangers or threats.

Don't you love the adjective "perceived?"  How much of my fear is in my own head, fabricated organically because I think I'm going to lose something I already have or I'm not going to get something that I want?

Here's one of my favorite passages from The Big Book concerning fear: "This short word somehow touches about every aspect of our lives.  It was an evil and corroding thread; the fabric of our existence was shot through with it.  It set in motion trains of circumstance we felt we didn't deserve.  But did not we, ourselves, set the ball rolling?"

This section is from the chapter "Into Action" which details over and over and over again how the goal is to quit looking at others and start looking at ourselves, for like the first goddam time in our lives.

Don't you love that Bill W is describing fear using the imagery of a seamstress?  Talk about an anachronism . . .   Don't you love the image of an "evil and corroding thread?"  I love the idea of my clothing containing an evil and corroding thread.  I love the idea of the fabric of my existence crawling with evil and corroding threads.

Fear: An emotion experienced in anticipation of some specific pain or danger (usually accompanied by the desire to flee or fight).