The Mutation of Fear

Fear can be described as an emotional state induced by a perceived threat or the response to a threatening situation. Fear is a basic mechanism for survival. Responding to fear is using the ability to be aware of danger and either run or confront it, also known as the Fight or Flight response. 
Lately I realised that passivity and anger are also hidden fear. But, they are sometimes so subtle, that it takes effort and even self-analysis to realise it. 
Passivity and anger are two sides of the same coin. But they do not really look like fear, or how fear feels. 
Fear feels like an adrenaline take off, when one is threatened usually responds with either escaping the threat or facing it. It is a strong, energetic emotion that leads to action.
Obviously, when fear leads to passivity in the form of depression and introversion, or anger in the form of rage, something is not working properly. Fear induces action, not enclosure. 
What is wrong, then? Or, what has changed, or even mutated, the response to such a primary emotion?


To me, it is passivity in general. Blame it on colour TV, or on contemporary comfort, or on reasonable detachment from the ''real'' world via, everything, really, whether the net or beauty magazines. 
Passivity of the receptor, I would call it. Of course, we are highly opinionated. But, in the same time, the world revolves around itself, and so do we. We are well informed, we are well aware, but we don't really know what to do with knowledge and awareness, everything flashes before our eyes and vanishes.
Living our lives inside the passivity of the receptor is nice and cosy, when all is well. But when it comes to real threat, our unused  mechanism for survival does not know how to react, does not remember the flight or fight response. The mechanism is numbed and fear cannot express itself. It is there, but lurking in the back of the head, causing everything but action. 
I noticed it can leave you in inertia for days or weeks, lying on the sofa, watching the telly and eating amazing amounts of greasy food. I also noticed, when the ''depression period'' is over, it can wake you up into a state of rage, usually a self-directed rage, the utter annoyance for wasting so much time and energy into depression.
This mutated response to fear can do even worse, depression and rage are only two mild examples. It can play tricks to the mind, causing acute obsessions and phobias. It can also reveal itself through illness.
Fear is easy to induce. Everyone is afraid of something. It is a powerful tool. It is also an excuse to not take action, to not lose the comfort. I can not blame governments, ads and media alone, for fear is the feeling of the receptor, not the effector. We are afraid because we are afraid, mainly. Because we choose to be afraid instead of acting against it. 
This is a love blog, so some of you could be wondering, what the fuck is fear doing here.
The first thing I learned on therapy was that hate is not the opposite of love. Fear is. It's the way our neurons are built. Fear is a learning process for protection. Love is the reward of safety. Fear is instant, love is a way of living. We can't have them both in the same time. 
But, we can choose the way we want to live. 

Love in the time of Econ Crisis

  I met you in a crowded room. The room was crowded with egos. The real people were few.
It was one of these posh bars where people drift after a hectic days work. It was definitely a good bar, politically correct cocktails, a bit dry and deprived of any risk, apart from the calculated ones. Men-in-suits kind of place. Loose ties, loose minds. Nobody dared bother you, even if they worked next door during office hours. That is, unless you wanted to.
  You were sitting on a bar stool. Quite alone, although half the people in there were or used to be your employees, as I realised later on. For, I had seen you around, but could not place you yet, as I leaned on the almost deserted bar to order a Bombay tonic.
  I was alone and not lonely, I was not living or working in that part of town, I usually disliked posh bars, and had no idea what I was doing there. Ah, waiting for an acquaintance that would eventually not show up - that's how great love stories usually begin.  
  I sat a couple of stools away from you, sipping my comfortable drink. You were playing with your blackberry or something like that. Occasionally, you exchanged few words with the bar tender. You voice was sweet and generally pleasant and caught my mind and body into a swirl. You talked nonsense with the poor working class person, you had that friendly yet arrogant tone, you knew your stuff when it came to financial matters, everyone seemed to be talking about the Econ Crisis these days, even single minded middle and low class people.
  At least, that's how I perceived your deliberately elitistic and highly elaborate yet purely neoliberal scrap of information, that the bar tender tried to digest. After all, you talked numbers, but to the poor soul, it was translated into poverty. That bar tender was a clever swine after all. He refilled your glass of what seemed like some rare malt, and quietly withdrew in the background. He definitely seemed intimidated. 
  Your sweet yet ruthless voice died down, and that's when I had to turn my head to take a better look at you. You don't sit next to an econocrat every day, at least not in my pluralist and humanitarian circle of friends and colleagues. It was a unique opportunity to actually observe another kind of human, the sub-species of men in power. It was intriguing to solemnly observe, I din't actually care to meet you, for your previous speech was dried of empathy and consideration for the oppressed masses, which is the rest of us, common people.
  I was half way through my drink when I turned my head to take a look. You caught my eye and smiled. I have to admit that your sweet voice matched your nice smile, so had to smile back, and say hello. You realised I recognised you, and waited few seconds in silence, probably to give me time to realise I recognised you and hopefully ask, just like the bar tender did, for some valuable financial data, but I did not. I did not know what to say and could not care less for advice, but have to admit, I wanted to hear you talk. We could talk about the weather, but that could be my field of catastrophe, because to us, environmentalists, weather translates to climate change.
  So I kept quiet. We are getting poorer, sicker and depressed every day, it would seem unfair to spoil the relaxed happy hour on repeating the evening news. I know this was a selfish thought, since you were directly involved in the evening news paranoia, but I was trained, after years of psychotherapy, to concentrate on positive thoughts. I had to deprive you of your field of connaissance. Or simply try and see what lies behind that spineless dry elitistic mind of yours, for it would be highly unfair for a man of high knowledge and education and the sweetest of voices and smiles, to be exactly what they look like.
  Your voice sounded again. You wanted to know whether I came there often. You had not seeing me around. Was I in the news industry? I smiled, for I enjoyed the tone of your voice, but no, I was not one of yours. I was a mere nobody. Not corrupted or sold out in the least. Of course, you ceased smiling, but you did not look offended. And most importantly, you did not try to convince me otherwise. I appreciated the honesty and apologised for my harsh comments. You said it's OK, everyone hates media people as well as bank managers. And you were a bit of both. I added that I used to agree with your neoliberal position, but now everything is real and not theory, it is somehow affecting our lives, so we have to be careful when we express super right wing opinions, for numbers and casualties are people, after all. You smiled again, but did not try to intimidate me, or shower me with facts and figures. You recognised me, for I was brought up on elitism as well, a sad legacy that I carry around like a birthmark.
  My stomach (where the third chakra resides) was sending faded signals to the mind, that this arrogant middle aged man was not the right man, and that the heart was not equally involved in the game. I sighed. What the fuck. Another game of the mind, then. I took a deep breath, and said, I had to be going, for my acquaintance was nowhere to be seen. You looked somehow disappointed, but did not try to persuade me to stay.
  I paid for my drink. My third chakra congratulated me on my quick reflexes. And then, you stood up and offered me a ride home. I lived down town. You lived in the suburbs. It was the least you could do, you said, since your presence was not sufficient to make me want another drink.
  I lingered for a couple of seconds. The chakra was numb and silent. What now? What were you saying now? Oh that voice...if you could shut up for a moment, to let me think! But it was going on and on about that drink and the pleasure of my company and all that unnecessary bullshit that men say to get laid, but you were not just any man, you were a man with a voice that had the ability to turn a woman on and you would not shut up!
  We were both standing by the bar, pretty close to each other, so I leaned over and kissed you. That shut you up momentarily.
  I sat right beside you and agreed to have another drink.

a t o m i c

This is a love post on dark days like these.


The nuclear and humanitarian disaster in Japan inhibits every persons mind, and what it really does, apart from rising our concern for living beings suffering and pollution spreading, is that it makes us think. 
and I am thinking a lot these days...
I have been a late cold war child, grew up with the ''balance of terror'' in the back of my head.
It's a terror that never leaves you, really, for it is subtle and deliberate. 
But it was war times, and it was, at least, a negotiable terror, unjustified, like every other war, but partly understandable. It never gave way to disaster, anyway (apart from a vast number of nuclear tests).
The terror was enough to sustain the balance and prohibit the use on civilians.




But this time, like in every nuclear accident, it is a time of peace. 
Peace and Progress for the comfort of modern man. 


I think hard these days, I am no expert, and realise that nuclear power is cheap and nasty. And helps us to achieve the level of comfort. Our comfortable lives are based on energy supplies. And as much as we protest on clean and renewable energy, we know that our comfort will be disrupted if we shift entirely on green. 


But still, we need, as a community, as a bunch of common people, really, to decide what world do we want to live in. Energy supply is based on demand. If we use less, we need less. It's common sense, really. 
We cannot go on living on such a high risk of nuclear contamination because we want to live in comfort. 
This world is not created for us alone, and in the end of the day, it doesn't give a shit. 
One quake, and we 're done. 
But what we do, is, not face thousands of natural disaster victims and economic recession alone. 
What we do is contaminate the land we live in, deprive it of its own life. 
We create living cemeteries.


Found the atomic definition on the Merriam-Webster: 
1. a: of, relating to, or concerned with atoms
    b: nuclear
2. a: marked by acceptance of the theory of atomism
    b: atomistic


Atomistic: composed of many simple elements; also : characterized by or resulting from division into unconnected or antagonistic fragments <an atomistic society>


....and that explains a lot. 

portrait of an emotional vampire

I don't know whether an emotional vampire is born into this interesting condition or whether he/she is made through traumas and abuse during childhood years.
As far as I remember, as a child, I lacked one vital thing. Empathy. Feelings for human beings. I had plenty of feelings for the earth, the greenhouse effect, the abolishing of nuclear energy, animal rights and respect for life in general. But when it came to humans, I could not feel at all. But I wanted to feel, so I indulged in over reactive bursts of possession, of magical connections, infatuations, and other over exaggerated manifestations that, to my untrained eye and heart, resembled emotions. They were, of course, hunger, craving, not real feelings. And they made people feel uncomfortably. Friends reacted, and reacted badly. At the tender years of puberty, they reacted with abandonment. To me, it was a shock. It was the proof that I was somehow flawed, that I possessed some vicious gene of madness. So I reformed. I learned my manners. I learned not to cross boundaries and to respect limits. Out of fear of harming them, and out of fear of them abandoning me once more, I learned to control the hunger.
And I went on, seemingly happily, into adulthood. And learned to feed my hunger on alternative means that could not hurt anyone - but me. I built a wall between the hunger and myself, to protect those around me, I built a reversed mirror inside the wall to protect me from my flawed self - the mirror looked always at the world, never inside. It was fear, of course. The fear of abandonment, the King of Fears. Especially developed to people with narcissistic personalities. Such as me.
But, despite the protection, the hunger would not go away. It needed to be fed, and was aroused by love. Romantic love, a thing I could never manage to control. When it occurred, it left me hopeless, in the mercy of the hunger. Lack of control activated fear of abandonment. Everything crashed down, each and every time I allowed myself to fall in love. My wall and mirror, my tools for survival, did not know when to let go and allow love and affection. The were programmed to doubly protect. And, most importantly, I was unaware of their existence.
So, hopeless in love supplies, the hunger still had to be satisfied. It started eating up the self. A series of phobias, obsessions and compulsions occurred - I had turned into an emotional vampire of myself , feasting upon my soul. That was enough to awake me from my dream of deceit into reality. And I saw the wall. And I tore it down. And I saw the reversed mirror. And I turned it to my self. And I saw the source. The fear. The black hole in my heart, the absence of emotions, the generator of the hunger.
Emotional vampires are nothing but immature hearts, their emotions being at an infant stage of development. Emotional immaturity, resembling a spoilt child, while underneath lies the terrible fear of unworthiness. They don't trust the world, they don't trust themselves. They hide beneath their ideal self image, but that's only a false reflection. A mere distortion carefully constructed because they think they lack something.
I have been always terrified at looking at mirrors. Especially when I was off guard, mostly when I woke up and was not fully concious and in control of myself. I have always had the intense idea that instead of my own reflection, I will face a monster in the mirror. Now that I am aware, I know I was afraid much more than a monster. I was afraid that I will look, and there will be no reflection at all.