Grounding fears

A woman asked me a couple simple questions the other day as a way of learning about me.  She asked what grounded me and what were my fears?  Simple questions but penetrating.  I had to think about them.  The fears came right away but grounding is not something I think about ever.  

My fear is being alone.  Not the fear of being alone actually, but being alone when it matters.  I am introverted, I like being alone but there are times in your life that you need someone there to listen to what you have to say.  There is the fear that your life will go unwitnessed, that when you have passed by, your life will have been unremarked upon.  That has been my fear since high-school.  It has mostly been realized too.  I have been alone most of that time and have thus become very self reliant.  There are times, though, where you need to tell someone something and have them just listen, not passing judgement and be there for you.  When they are not there, you are alone.  When you have friends and people around you that if you tell them these things, they put you down, make fun of you or tell others what you said.  You learn.  And when you have something to say, something you need to express, you are also alone.

People pair up for many reasons, finances, sex, raising a family, but it is to not be alone at those times where no one should be alone that is the underlying thing about relationships and when they are not there, the relationship ends.  

What grounds me was the tougher question, because I had not thought about it that way.  What is grounding?  Is that an anchor on reality?  That which keeps me sane?  The short answer would be everything that is not the opposite.  My Blog grounds me.  I use it as a relationship substitute.  I tell my blog the things that I can't tell anyone else.  The people who read it mostly don't know me so it is okay.  A few people I know read it and that is okay, I know they read it so I feel like I am telling them.  Some of them do not like it and they stop reading, which is fine.  My blog has evolved over the time I have had it to expand into what it is now.  

My bike rides ground me.  It represents an accomplishment or a labour that I have performed.  They are little goals that I regularly complete and make me feel good. I have little lights on my spokes that create a glowing circle as I whip around; it is so cool!  I have reflectors pasted all over the skin so people can see me at night, because guess when I do most of my cycling these days, night.  Whipping down the hill I ask if I can break the speed limit? I hit 60kph and I feel great, I hit 55 I feel great and a little stress lifts off me.

I read.  Lately that has been difficult.  I look at the book, crisp new pages, unblemished by light or air pressed together like a brick with three hundred leafs, printed on both sides and I see the commitment of time a head and I ask why?  But I do it and I enjoy it.  I feel the stress lift off me as I read only when I stop and things are better than when I started.  

My friends.  Some are real friends, the kind that could be more if there was not the spoken or unspoken barrier due to gender or some other culturally constructed barrier like age difference (or gender).  Sometimes it is my friend's children.  E. and B. are like unrestricted joy in my life and spending time with them is better than everything else multiplied by everything else.  Like when they hug me without prompting.  

Synopsis: fear being alone, grounded by forgetting that I am alone, surviving with being alone, reaching out to others while being alone and lastly unconsciously given love — that blows the others away.