Bipolar and Army Training

I’m taking some advice from army training today in order to deal with my anxiety. Which is through the roof today. I feel like I can barely breathe, on the verge of a panic attack probably. So far I’m coping, and I think it’s the most helpful thing I’ve been able to find today.

One of the things that I was reading about was putting yourself into positions where you have to face your fear. And while I won’t be visiting a biker bar anytime soon, I forced myself to leave the house earlier for an hour and face the fear of being around other people.

Another tip is talking about it, which is what I’m doing right now. Keeping things bottled up is, from what I’m reading, a bad decision for soldiers. Just writing this out is allowing me to break down a little bit, and release some of the emotion that feels trapped inside of my chest.

And that’s really what I feel the problem is sometimes, that I just need to cry about it and move on. But something blocks that out and I can’t express physically the emotions that I feel. I’m well beyond the issue of worrying about being a man who cries, it’s more that I don’t feel safe enough to let the emotion out. I don’t know how to describe that feeling, other then the emotion is there but it just won’t come out.

Even just thinking about what soldiers must face on the battlefield and the stress that they undergo is proving to be a huge help for me. Knowing that they must feel the same sort of physical feelings that I have right now, and still go on and complete their mission, tells me that people can and do overcome their fears. And feeling powerless is probably the biggest hurtle that I have to overcome with my illness. Knowing that sometimes a soldier breaks down and cries for their mama is helping surprisingly enough. It tells me that even the tough ones need that emotional release in order to cope. I’m sure that isn’t the case for all soldiers, but for some I’m reading about it’s just something that happens.

I’m so afraid of being the target of a gang or organized crime. It’s not a rational fear, it’s something that consumes me. I don’t want them to torture my family, I don’t want them to torture me. I don’t want to be forced to deal drugs for them, I don’t want to be some sort of slave to their organization due to threats to my family.

I had a strange experience in the mall about two and a half years ago. I think by talking about it I can start to deal with the emotions attached to it.

A man came up to me in a store, and asked me where I got my coffee. I had a bad feeling about him from the look in his eyes, and felt like something just wasn’t right. I stuttered and flushed red, and could barely speak. He started asking weird questions, and looked as though he had a gun in his jacket pocket pointed at me. I was with my younger brother at the time, and I was fearful as much for his life as for mine. When this man asked me for my name, he pulled his hand very quickly out of his jacket as though he was going to pull the gun out to shoot me. I have no proof that a gun even existed, but there was something gun shaped and heavy in that fucking pocket.

The man continued to ask me strange questions, that I have no memory of right now. The only question I remember is being asked if I felt guilty for something. I blubbered some things that I have no memory of now either. The thing I can remember is he asked if he could pray for me, and put his hand on my shoulder. He said strange things in the prayer, as if it would be my last prayer for me. “Deliver him from evil, let him be free” etc. I can’t remember the exact words anymore, but that prayer was just as scary as the “gun” in his pocket. It was like something out of a movie, something a religious gangster sais to his victim before killing him.

Eventually, he asked if I would go talk to him outside of the store. I agreed, and at this time felt like I was surely a dead man. I agreed because I didn’t want my brother involved, and thought it was better he shoot me where my brother wouldn’t have to witness it.

My dad had been sitting outside of the store, noticed something was up, and intervened. He basically told the guy that was enough, and pulled me away from him. The guy grabbed me by the shoulder, and began praying again. I told my brother and father I loved them as I thought he was about to just kill me right then and there. At this point my dad grabbed the guy and told him to get lost, and he finally walked away.

This is the most basic way I can relate the story of what happened that day. I can’t remember it anymore, it’s been blocked out from fear or something. I just know it was strange, and that I thought in my heart I was going to die that day. The gun in the pocket, and the prayer, will always stick out in my mind like it happened yesterday.

There’s even more that happened later on that I just don’t feel able to talk about today. Put simply, I fled my hometown, to another town 4 hours away where I had family living. And in this town I had another traumatic experience with a religious person that used to be involved heavily in gangs. I also don’t remember the details of what happened during that time.

I was put in a psychiatric hospital in the closest major city to my hometown. It was another traumatic experience in itself. The reason I was put there was because I was so afraid after fleeing home and going to my families house in the countryside, that I felt suicidal. I tried to get help at the hospital there, just to talk to somebody about it, but this was a small town that didn’t have the right people to deal with that sort of thing. And so I was transported in an ambulance down to the big city to the psychiatric ward. They treated me like shit there, and it took everything to pretend I was completely okay for five days so that they would let me out. I wasn’t okay at all, but they were far from helping.

It was a lot of stress in a short period of time, probably the span of 3-4 weeks. My nerves were shot, and I was fearful for my life and the lives of my family every single day for months. It was during this time that I found a medication that finally worked for my illness, and began the road to recovery.

Bad days still come, like today, and I have to deal with them head on if I am to overcome them. It is only through courage and ambition to be greater then myself that I am able to cope with these fears that I have. Sometimes it’s not being a big chested, prideful, mans man that takes courage. Sometimes it’s letting my fears out in words, and dealing with them on an emotional level. And some days it really is about accepting death as unavoidable, but treating fear as something that cannot control me.

This is where some of the army stuff is helping me today. I have a mission in life, and I can’t let fear get in the way of that. I have to be brave and overcome the fears and live my life to the fullest that I can. I cannot control the things that may happen to me, I can only control how I react to them.

One last thing that I was reading about was imagining the worst case scenario, and dealing with the emotions that it brings up. So I’m allowing myself to think about what I am most afraid of, and practising deep breathing exercises to control my nervous system while I think about those things. This actually helps tremendously, thinking about the worst puts the fear into a more tangible place, it’s something I can see in my mind and face. It’s much worse just having a feeling of terror without even knowing why.

Talking about all of this is helping as well. I’m sweating, I’ve cried, I have a headache, but the feeling in my chest is going away. Perhaps it will return once I’m finished, but for the time being I am conquering the physical effects of fear in my body.

I wish there was a division of the army that people with mental illnesses could join. I feel the regiment and discipline would be good for me. So far nothing exists that I know about. Maybe this will change in the future, but for now I’ll just have to stick to reading about how they deal with stress.

 

Lonesome

I want a friend. A person who I can spend time with and share experiences with. A regular friend that I can see more then once a month. I don’t even get to spend time with my girlfriend for most of the week because of our circumstances. A partner and a friend are two different things though and what I really need is a buddy.

It will be around 4 years now that I’ve been without a friend. Entering my bipolar and exiting the toxic friends I used to have, there just hasn’t been any follow up in finding new people to hang out with. I’ve hardly left the house for the past couple years, I was in recovery for all that time and making friends wasn’t really given any consideration.

There has been a lot of fear of finding friends as well. Having a mental illness makes people leery to get close to you. That’s how I feel anyways. I never want to seem like a needy person to others or like I’m a burden, which made it almost impossible the last couple years to make friends. I did need help and support, and putting that on friends didn’t seem right. Now that I’ve climbed myself a little further out of the hole, I think that maybe it’s time I made some friends.

It’s hard for people to connect when all I know is the challenges I’ve faced. I don’t have any hobbies or interest, mostly I’ve been interested in how the heck I can get better. Probably obsessively. I would like to connect with people in my situation to maybe have something in common, but I don’t feel any sort of connection with people in my situation. I feel quite different then most people.

Where is the other guy who has bipolar, is working hard on recovery, though slowly, who is keen on starting a business and improving themselves. Where’s the guy who is sensitive on the weird level that I am. Secure in their sensitivity I suppose. Sensitive in a masculine way. Now that I think about it, that guy is probably hard to find for most people.

I find most guys are either so sensitive that they allow the world to happen to them, or they are so insensitive that it’s like their heart is made of coal. Where’s the guys who show their vulnerabilities, but at the same time work on them and strengthen those vulnerabilities? Where have all the cowboys gone? HA! Sorry I had to.

I feel some sort of connection with my brother, but he’s got his own issues and doesn’t let me in most of the time. I have my cousin who I visit once or twice a month, but we just don’t get to see each other enough because of the logistics and our money situation.

I know part of what stops me from having good relationships is because of my relationship with my father. Never really trusting that somebody loves me, or feeling confused about how somebody feels about me. It’s hard for me to believe somebody when they tell me how they actually feel.

What I really miss, even from my toxic friends, is just that feeling that somebody wants to be around me. That I am someone they can count on and trust. That their not hanging out because they feel sorry for me, or because I hounded them to come hang out, but because they honestly just want to come and share some time together.

I miss feeling relaxed in the moment, safe with friends and able to just sit and Be. Some of the greatest memories I have I wasn’t even talking to my friends. I remember just the company being enough, feeling wanted and understood without so many words.

What I really crave is an equal. Somebody who is not in the same place as me, I have nothing against, but our paths just simply are not the same. Somebody who is achieving more in their life, I feel like I’m being dragged along and like they are giving and I am taking. I would like to have somebody who is in the same place, that I can work on things and grow with.

I don’t really know what to do at this point. I suppose I will look into places where I could meet other like-minded individuals. I’m going to a tech-meetup for entrepreneurs in a couple days, and I’m going to force myself to at least try talking to some people. Maybe I will look for other people with mental illness as well that I could possibly connect with.

Letting mistakes be mistakes.

It seems like it’s going to take a few tries of me hitting rock bottom to climb my way out of it. I was doing really well again, and then stumbled into old habits for the past few days. I know there’s some days where I just won’t be able to beat depression, but I can attest to this being in my own hands. I self-sabotaged and I know it.

My fears and especially my anxiety are the culprits I was running away from. There is just so damn much I need to work on, and half the time it feels like my goals are unreachable. When I think that I can’t do it, I tend to say “screw it” and sabotage the progress I’ve made. The only thing I can do is start over though, and perhaps keeping myself accountable on my blog will be helpful to me. Not only that, I can go back and read and recognize the same patterns I fall into.

The changes in my mood, and seeing things improving, has definitely been a strange and scary experience. I suppose a large part of that is fear of failure. Fear of putting a lot of work into something and thinking it will amount to nothing. Objectively I know this is silly, the progress I’ve made is there to be seen. The work I’ve already done has put me in a place I was not in before.

Fear of failure stops me way to much. It’s nefarious because it can be so silent and hard to measure. I can’t always pinpoint what is giving me anxiety and stopping me from moving forwards. I sometimes think that it’s something else that I am afraid of, when in reality it is the fear of failing.

I haven’t found any ways that are effective enough at battling these fears. It’s something I have to keep working at and keep searching for answers. I watched a video tonight on Youtube, it’s called the London Real, and it was an interview on Dan Pena. He’s a multi-millionaire, as well as a mentor to entrepreneurs, and has some great philosophies for life and accomplishing things. I recommend anybody with an hour and a half to spare to watch the video I just posted.

Something valuable to me tonight, and it’s so simple, is the idea of “just fucking do it”. It wasn’t just the four words that got to me though, it was everything behind it and who he is as a person that makes it more meaningful. To hear about the types of things that people overcome, and survive, was just as important as the idea itself.

Dan Pena runs a mentorship program, and hearing the stories about people coming there made me feel a lot better. Like it’s okay to fuck up sometimes. Just hearing that people had cried, passed out, even soiled themselves at his program made me feel a lot better. Knowing that they had vulnerabilities, and even had those vulnerabilities be shown to others, made me feel less afraid of the embarrassment I will have to face as I grow.

I think what I need to allow to happen is to possibly cry, or feel completely humiliated, in front of others. I need to see that for one, it doesn’t mean anything, and more importantly, that it is not effective to getting to where I want to be. I think if I were to break down in front of an employer or investor, and see that it doesn’t do me any good, it will train my mind to find other avenues for being successful and pulling my own weight.

Embarrassment is one of my biggest fears, and while in an objective mood while I am writing my blog, I can see how silly it is to be afraid of. It has it’s place for keeping people from being complete idiots all the time, but at the same time it’s not something for me to allow to control my life. If I could just let myself be embarrassed, and see that I’m still alive afterword, I would probably start to overcome it.

I think even writing this blog, and sharing my innermost thoughts and feelings, has been a very good thing for me. I’ve exposed myself, and even received support in doing so. And I ultimately feel better afterword. I’m not nearly as afraid to write in my blog now as I was when I first started.

Another great fear of mine is that I will end up homeless. While there is some weight to that thought because of my mental illness, I don’t think it is something to be so afraid of from every possible decision I make. And perhaps I would become stronger if it were to happen. At this point I don’t feel that I would survive it, but if I am honest with myself there really is no way to know unless it happened. Maybe I would overcome it and become stronger for it. Maybe it would kill me. I think what I’m really afraid of is being stuck that way for my whole life. Getting stuck in a situation I can’t escape, and living in hell until the day I die.

I also fear going to jail someday for making a mistake from not knowing something is against the law. This teeters on paranoia though, and I know that my illness has a part to do with this irrational fear. I am a rule-abiding citizen, I don’t frequent political or radical websites, and I don’t voice radical political opinions. This fear is something I don’t know how to get around. I am so afraid of going to jail.

I think I might have to let go of some of my pride and just allow myself to be humiliated. This is a very deep sore spot for me, and I hope that I can work on this with my counsellor to find out the root causes for it.

There was a lot of anxiety I was facing today. More on the side of restlessness, like there’s a void I need to fill. I’m glad I had only a few cigarettes left today, as I probably would have been chain-smoking all day. I don’t know how to describe this restlessness I get, and it’s strange because it can lead to raging anger if I don’t deal with it. I wish I would have thought earlier today to just write in my blog, as it usually calms me down and grounds me a little bit. Any little thing that I feel I need and am not getting turns the anxiety into anger.

Perhaps I need to accept my anger for what it is. Understand that I am mad right now, and that it will pass. It’s almost as if I feel guilty for being angry, like it’s not right to feel that way. Some of the angry thoughts I have are pretty out there though, and I do try to work on talking myself out of unreasonable thoughts. But it is a natural human feeling, and the only real control you have over it is how you react to it. I don’t think I can stop myself from being angry, but I do have the power not to act upon the things I am angry about. If I accept the anger for what it is, and reaction to something I think is unfair, then I can allow myself to ride it out until I find a solution to not allow it to make me angry in the future.

I’m afraid of my feelings, I’ve numbed them out with drugs and alcohol for years. I’ve gotten over the alcohol years ago, but cannabis is ultimately my next hurtle. Dealing with the root causes for these feelings is the only way they can be over and done with.

This effective numbing has left me in a strange place now as I start to feel things again. The anger seems to be coming out first, but now I’m finding it being accompanied by compassion, curiosity, excitement, and at some times even happiness. The happiness is the weirdest one because mostly it just gives me anxiety right now. I’m afraid to truly feel it for what it is, and so the anxiety sets in with that discrepancy between “I feel good” and “I shouldn’t feel good, I haven’t felt good in a long time.”

What’s important to see is that I always get back up, and am stronger every time I do. I’m learning to look past failures, learn from them, and move on or start over.

The last post I did, Evolution and assholes, is a good example of not covering up my mistakes or taking responsibility for them and learning to be better. I was tempted to take it down because it was a fear-response blog post, but I think I will leave it up as a reminder to the dark places I can go. I will leave it up for people to see my stumble and recover from it. I just realized I’ve embarrassed myself to potentially a handful of people. I can learn from this, and maybe anybody reading here can learn from this as well. There is still coming back from your mistakes. Some may not forgive you for those mistakes, but it is your right and prerogative to see the failure and correct it.

I’ve been abused by a stereotype of a person, and I took that anger out in a way that for the time felt like it put me above them. Any contemplative person would be able to see I was speaking out of pain and fear rather then out of love and understanding. I’ve been traumatized by a stereotype of a person, and it’s easy to get so angry about the unfairness of the situation I was in and take it out on anybody sharing the same stereotype. By thinking of them as below me, it takes some of the power they have away temporarily. By acting like they are a detriment to society I give myself a short power trip in saying “what you did to me was wrong, you piece of shit.”

Surely there are better ways to deal with this pain and suffering caused by these people. To let myself go into the grey areas that we as humans truly are a part of. Not to mention being angry and thinking so deeply into it as to try to deconstruct people on an evolutionary level, is really what’s letting those people still have that power over me. Inflating my ego to feel bigger all the time isn’t healthy, and will only lead to a failure when I am truly challenged by an obstacle. Being something and saying you’re something are two different things.

The only thing that I still stand by in that piece of writing is that sometimes a gloated ego is necessary. When you have self-esteem as low as I do, it’s good to explore overcompensating. Only having explored low self-esteem, and inflated self-esteem, can I find the middle ground for where my true, inner self-esteem lies. If I’ve learned anything that I really still believe in, it’s that finding where you belong on a spectrum is key, and only by discovering different places on that spectrum can you find out where you belong.

Lastly, I will mention a comment posted on my evolution and assholes blog post. It was a passive aggressive attack on my thinking. It seems I must have offended them on a certain level, I’m guessing they’ve dealt with self-appraising, gloating type people before and I hit a nerve strong enough for them to say something about it. This is only my take on the situation, a guess at what was really going on between us. I hope that she would be brave enough to let bygones-be-bygones and talk to me about what really it was that bothered her so much.

At first I was very angry about the comment. I felt like they were breaking down the work I am putting into become a better person, not recognizing that I’m not perfect yet and that I am still learning better techniques to deal with my issues. So far I only know what’s been taught by my parents, and while some things were very healthy for me, some were also detrimental to my success and becoming a better person. I am no longer my parents, I can choose who I want to be. It’s just hard to explain to people that I’ve only got what I’ve got right now, my parents teachings. I’m learning new ways of dealing with life, and I find new things to practise all the time. The thing is I’m just not there yet. I’m relatively new to this becoming a stronger version of myself. I’ve overcome a lot of shitty things about myself but there are still so many more to work on. Sometimes I’m still going to fuck up. Sometimes I’m going to use the wrong strategy. The only thing I can do is move on and do better the next time around.

So with that said, I apologize Kirsty if I offended you or made you angry or touched a nerve. I apologize for my quip back, if I could take it back I would but I can’t and now I must live with it. And I thank you for your comment, as it has allowed me to grow. It hurt me at first, but I am stronger then I was when I first read it. The pain it inflicted has healed over and I see now more value in you pointing out some of my flaws. I hope we can remain civil with each other, and we are stronger as a community then as we are divided. Peace and love to you Kirsty.

Evolution and Assholes

It looks like drinking needs to be cut out too. It sucks because I enjoy a good night with my brother talking about life and motivations while we have a few beers. It’s not worth it to drag myself down though, and the alcohol really depresses me. I just went into a slump tonight, fell to a low I haven’t felt in a couple months.

I was really starting to think about my weaknesses, and I got that deep hole inside that makes me feel like I don’t want to live anymore. I had to take an Ativan just to calm down and ground myself. I don’t like that I’m reliant on it sometimes, but it is what it is.

The problem tonight was thinking about how tough some people are. Specifically I’m thinking about the stereotypical truck drivers and biker guys. They just seem to have no fear, and nothing phases them. They’re confident and believe in what their opinions are. Not only that, they can back themselves up physically because they are rough and tough. They’ve been through some hard times and it’s strengthened them.

I’m not that kind of strong. I have fears, and those fears do get in the way sometimes. Death is one of them. More specifically dying before I’ve accomplished what I want to do. I’m not physically a huge guy either, and I’ve never been in a fight.

I don’t even know what my problem is exactly. Maybe it’s that I have a problem with authority. Which is weird in itself, I don’t have a problem with police or anything at all, if anything I respect them. It’s more the people who would have authority because they are bad people. They have physical strength, and if you get on their bad side they could just hurt you. And even if you were bigger then them, they have friends in dark places. These are the kind of people I’m afraid of and who make my blood boil sometimes. They can do what they want and there’s nothing you can do about it. You can’t even defend yourself.

There’s nothing I can do about it anyways. I don’t have any tough friends, I don’t have a personal army. I think this aloneness is probably a big part of this. I feel very vulnerable having no friends, nobody to back me up in a conversational or physical confrontation. I can only hope that I somehow gain some strength out of having to fend for myself.

What lifted me up from this sort of thinking is logical thinking and a little science even. I remembered that survival of the fittest doesn’t necessarily mean the strongest or fastest. It means the most adaptable to the situation. I realized that I am strong in my own ways. Evolution has given me gifts that put me in a good position if I just take advantage of it.

I’m intelligent , I don’t say it to brag, I just know it’s true. I think on a level that’s climbing towards our worlds leaders. This is about as egotistical as I can get, but if it brings me above and beyond then it is a tool that I will use.

I can see the use of brute force in the trade world, and how it’s useful for those kinds of people to be rough and tough. Building infrastructure for todays world is a hard challenge, and beating it into submission has worked very well so far. There is no current alternative to people just being tough and dirty to get things done. We need those kind of people to build things for us.

Where I get mixed up is seeing that I’m not that kind of tough, and feeling like that makes me not as useful to society. But that simply is not true. It takes all kinds of people to make our society run.

That TV show the trucker likes to watch and unwind to when he gets home off the road, that’s because of different people working together. It sure as hell wasn’t a trucker that invented the TV. In fact the truck that he uses to even have the job he has, that was intelligent people, not rough and tough people, who made it come together. And it goes higher then that. The big wigs, the heads of corporations and businesses, those are the reason that trucker even has a use for himself. Without people running the business, he would be shit out of luck. He’s a trucker, that’s what he’s built for, he’s not built for being in charge of a business. What’s interesting is there are hybrids of intelligent people and rough people, and those are the people running those type of trade operations. The average tradesmen is specialized in his trade though, and has no abilities outside of it.

I just have to accept that there’s all kinds of people, and that everybody has their place in society, for now. Perhaps in the future the need for the roughest of the bunch will die out as robots take on more and more of societies grunt work. I think it’s possible there will be no need for people to be assholes in the future, and that evolution will do it’s job of weeding it out if it becomes counter-intuitive to surviving and thriving as a species. It’s easy to say something naïve like “That’s just life” or “there will always be assholes”. In reality though, those asshole traits are just characteristics of what is currently thriving on this planet. Just a piece of a human body and psyche. Something that evolution will keep or won’t keep. I think with the curve we are on, it’s really the brute force type guys who will start to die out and the more intelligent will begin to thrive. It’s sort of the way it goes. Apes and bears are much stronger then us physically, but we are above them because we are more intelligent then they are. In the same way, I think artificial intelligence is the next step on the evolutionary ladder. I’m getting ahead of myself now, but this is what gives me grounding.

In the very far future, when we are more consciously controlling our own evolution, we will probably decide on whether we should keep those kinds of traits. Once brain hacking begins, who knows how different we will look as human beings.

This might all sound a little harsh and loopy, but I have to think about things as objectively as possible or I just won’t believe them. When I think about what the real, hard truth could be, or at least what sounds closest to it, I am grounded. I am able to accept myself and not feel worthless.

I’m on a path to success, and I have a good set of genes to carry me through. It’s in my blood to succeed and overcome, I just forget that sometimes. I have to stop and look objectively at myself, and see where my real strengths are and how far they will actually take me. And I would rather be egotistical then feel like shit for the rest of my life.

 

 

Anxiety to the Max

Wow, what a rush of feelings I’m having. I can’t even pinpoint exactly what’s wrong. I have some ideas, but it could be anything when it comes to anxiety. I feel like my chest is going to explode, it’s hard to breathe, and my muscles are going spastic. Anxiety sucks!

The first thing that comes to mind is fear of change. Things are slowly taking a turn for the better, who would think that could be bad? I’m coming out of my comfort zone and challenging myself to do better with my life. I have plans for the future, motivations for things to accomplish, and a sense of ambition.

My brother and I are working on a business idea. I’m excited to be working on something, especially something that seems like it could be a success. I look at what drives me, the want for freedom to use my time how I choose to, and it scares me as much it gives me a rush of exhilaration.

I’ll be open about it no matter how silly it may seem. I want it to be a million dollar idea. The market is there, we just have to execute. There are so many things we have to do to get to our end goals. I’m excited about those things no matter how nervous they make me.

I envision my future being that of personal freedom and of financial freedom. Having things I’ve always wanted, doing things I’ve always wanted. It’s just a matter of pushing myself to accomplish those goals. So while I know some of my anxiety is coming from the daunting task of starting and running a company, I can see that it’s not the root of the issue.

What I’m scared of, okay this is silly I know, is of being wealthy. I don’t understand it but it’s there. Perhaps it is because my life right now is so “comfortable”. I don’t regularly have to push myself, I don’t have to leave my comfort zone if I don’t want to. Heck, I barely leave the house most days.

The scary thing is just that things would be different. What if my family and my girlfriend change when I have money? What sorts of things will it do to change their personalities? I love them the way they are, and while they can always improve, what if wealth only brings out their negative qualities? What if there is fighting? What if it brings a line between us? What if my brother buys a new Ferrari and crashes it? This may all sound silly to you but these are real fears I have in chasing after my dreams. I would rather never have the money to begin with if it somehow led to the death of somebody I loved.

I’m afraid to lose my heart and my morality to money. I know I can overcome this if I stay true to myself, but that fear is there anyways. What will it do to change me? Will I still show humility to others, will I still be kind, will I have my morals? Deeper down me sais yes, I will still be who I am in my heart. Fearful me sais “Watch out!”. Maybe that fear can be a good thing, perhaps it will keep me on an straight course.

Are you ready for some super silly fears? I worry that I won’t have time for my cats as I really dig into this project. They’re getting old, what if they die before I have the chance to relax again and spend time with them? This may seem childish but I’m afraid of missing the last little bit of time we have together. They have been with me for 20 years, since I was a child, so that’s where the childish attachment comes from. They’ve been with me through everything that has ever happened in my life.

What if the money brings separation between my brother and I? He is my closest friend and ally, I would choose our bond over money. What if that changes? What if money becomes the only thing I love in my life? What if I stay the same but it changes my brother? What if he stops loving me one day? That thought scares me more then anything.

The more I talk about this the more it seems like that won’t happen. Obviously these things go very deep with me on an emotional and intellectual level, so I can’t imagine them ever going away. I think the fear is there still because I have gone down the path of immoral thinking before, and accepted it as who I was. If you read my first blog posts I was at one time obsessed with the idea of being wealthy. To the point it was all I cared about. This was during some of my worst manic stages I’ve ever faced, so I hope that it’s a symptom of my illness rather then who I am in my heart.

My last fear comes from the way I was brought up. I was a Jehovah’s witness for the first 16 years of my life, the teachings are still ingrained in me. While I don’t believe in a paradise earth or Satan anymore, those feelings still ache about the idea of wealth. What if Satan really did lure me into his trap? Look at how much I want these things. It’s only when I remember the reasons I don’t believe anymore, and my rational thinking about religion itself, that I can talk myself out of such silly notions.

Thinking about the good things I could do for the world with a hundred million, five hundred million, a billion dollars, is what keeps me grounded. I could bring so much value to the world with the means to make a difference. I’m not so naïve to believe in a utopia, or that everything isn’t too complicated to fix it all, but I do think that we can be better off then we are now. Science and technology have done wonderful things for us as humans, and will continue to do so with brilliant and visionary people to drive them forwards.

Writing in my blog really does seem to help. The anxiety will probably continue once I am finished, but while I’m writing I’m in the zone and I don’t think of much else. I recommend writing a journal to anybody suffering from anxiety or depression. It really helps to keep the feelings and emotions in check. It may not solve anything, but it allows you to carry on.

This may all seem very egotistical, or like I’m dreaming. So be it. Maybe I won’t accomplish a damn thing. I doubt it though. I think through repeated failure comes success. The truth of the matter is people do accomplish great things. You can’t do that if you don’t expect yourself to. My personal motto lately has been you can’t win the lottery if you don’t play it. Not that the lottery is a good investment or something that I play. It’s about the metaphor, I won’t ever have wealth if I am not pursuing and expecting wealth to be a part of my life.

I think my fear really comes down to the fear of change and the fear of success. Perhaps I will do some reading on how to overcome that.