Sticker shock

"So there you have it: Nature is a rotten mess.

But that's only the beginning.

If you take your eyes off it for one second,

it will kill you."

-- Lee Goldberg, Mr. Monk in Trouble

Self portrait 10-16-13

"The Ant"

The ant has made her self illustrious

By constant industry industrious.

So what? Would you be calm and placid

If you were full of formic acid?

-- Ogden Nash

There is a proverb that says "An elephant may be big, but it falls on its face more than an ant."

That may be so, but these ants fell on my face.

Not really.

They didn't fall from anywhere. I put them there. They're just stickers, silly.

Ding ding ding!

Bonus "October-faced" fun fact:  Myrmecophobia is the inexplicable fear of ants.

So today's face is me, disguised as a myrmecophobiac.

Add this cool new word to your vocabulary today by using it ten times in a sentence. People will think you're really smart.

Or a jackass.

Petrified

"Does not the stone rebuke me

for being more stone than it."

-- William Shakespeare, The Winter's Tale

Self portrait 8-27-13

"I believe that one defines oneself by reinvention.

To not be like your parents.

To not be like your friends.

To be yourself.

To cut yourself out of stone."

-- Henry Rollins

petrify [pe-truh-fahy]

verb

1. To convert into stone or a stony substance.

2. To benumb or paralyze with astonishment, horror, or other strong emotion.

3. to make rigid or inert; harden; deaden: The tragedy in his life petrified his emotions.

I am petrified.

I thought the word "petrified" simply meant being afraid, that it was just a synonym for being really really scared, really really frightened.

But the word has a finer, more complex meaning that that. 

While the word does have something to do with fear, it is also tied up intricately with the process of hardening, or turning to stone. It's about fear that paralyzes.

In fairy tales, characters who fail a quest may be turned into stone until they are rescued.

God knows my life is no fairy tale, but my "quest" right now is my battle against insomnia.

And I feel like I am failing miserably.

I am getting help, and I thought the help was helping. But lately I seem to be back at square one.

Some long sleepless nights are kicking my ass again. I am disappointed and discouraged.

And it scares the shit out of me.

It is a fear that paralyzes.

And I feel like the longer I wage this battle, the more hardened I am becoming. Sometimes I feel like I'm about to break, but other times I feel like I'm turning to stone. Like out of self-protection I am hardening emotionally, retreating into a stony, isolated little enclave deep inside myself.

I feel trapped inside the anxiety of "what if?" 

What if this is it?

What if I never get fixed? 

What if I never get rescued?

What if instead of getting easier, it just keeps getting harder?

Don't fence me in

"I see at intervals the glance of a curious sort of bird 

through the close set bars of a cage: 

a vivid, restless, resolute captive is there; 

were it but free, it would soar cloud high."

-- Charlotte Bronte, Jane Eyre

Self portrait 8-27-13

"Everybody's a bird, locked up in a pretty cage. 

Sometimes you fly to a slightly bigger one, 

but you never quite have the courage to abandon captivity completely."

-- Dave McKean, Cages

"Fear is the highest fence."

-- Dudley Nichols

Pucker up butter-cup

"I don't have to KISS her, do I?

Is that what Valentines do??!

Oh, gross!"

-- Bill Watterson, The Indispensable Calvin and Hobbes

Self portrait 8-14-13

“A kiss may ruin a human life.”

-- Oscar Wilde

Self portrait (2) 8-14-13

"Although it is rare, the fear of touch can have devastating consequences for those who suffer from it. If you are struggling with a fear of touch, kissing may feel like a violation instead of a pleasurable experience.

In some cases, the fear of kissing stems from a deeper concern over intimacy or vulnerability. Some people are actually more comfortable with having sex, which they view as impersonal, than with kissing, which they see as intimate. These issues are complex, and are best faced with the help of a competent, understanding therapist."

-- Lisa  Fritscher, 

"Philemaphobia: Understanding the 

Fear of Kissing"

Twisted sister

"The face and body may be perfect,

but if a twisted gene or a malformed egg can produce physical monsters,

may not the same process produce a malformed soul?"

-- John Steinbeck, East of Eden

Self portrait 7-22-13

"Most people tend to think the best of those who are blessed with beauty;

we have difficulty imagining that physical perfection

can conceal twisted emotions or a damaged mind."

-- Dean Koontz, Odd Thomas

Self portrait (2) 7-22-13

"The more fucked up you are, the more I like you.

As long as you've managed to hold onto your identity through all the shit,

then it won't matter how twisted you are. 

I will love you more for it."

-- Ashly Lorenzana

Self portrait (3) 7-22-13

"The truth is not distorted here, but rather a distortion is used to get at the truth."

-- Flannery O'Connor

Moody blues

“The memory has as many moods as the temper, 

and shifts its scenery like a diorama.”

-- George Eliot,  
Middlemarch: A Study of Provincial Life

Self portrait 6-26-13

“...trying to use willpower to overcome the apathetic sort of sadness that accompanies depression 

is like a person with no arms trying to punch themselves until their hands grow back. 

A fundamental component of the plan is missing and it isn't going to work.”

-- Allie Brosh, Hyperbole and a Half

Self portrait 6-26-13

“The momentum of the mind can be vexingly, involuntarily capricious.”

-- Gregory Maguire, 

A Lion Among Men

Feeling all kinds of everything, all colliding all over me, all at once, all the time. 

Nobody puts Baby in a corner

 "We put limitations on the way that we think about things, on ourselves, 

think about all the boxes we live in, male or female, 

you're this age, that age, this is your job, this is not your job, 

everything is about getting boxed in."

-- Brit Marling

Wood mannequin with cutout face and hair 5-19-13

 
 "The way they boxed us in here. 

Bricks and windows, windows and bricks."

-- Arthur Miller, Death of a Salesman

Wood mannequin with cutout face 5-19-13

 

"Nobody puts Baby in a corner."

-- Johnny, Dirty Dancing  

Jarhead

“We are not trapped by our thoughts. 

What we generally do, however, 
is create thoughts that trap us.”

-- Joshua David Stone,  

A Beginner's Guide to the Path of Ascension

Self portrait 5-5-13

“The things other people have put into my head,
at any rate, do not fit together nicely,
are often useless and ugly, are out of proportion with one another,
are out of proportion with life as it really is outside my head.”

-- Kurt Vonnegut, Breakfast of Champions 

As a chronic insomniac and someone who struggles with anxiety, I often long for the ability to take off my head at night, literally unscrew it and remove it. If only I could shelve it and it's squirming tangle of restless, anxious thoughts, and stick it all in a jar with the lid screwed tight. 

I also sometimes think that about my feet, when they are throbbing and keeping me awake. But I can put ice on my feet and they'll quiet down. My head, not so much. 

I can't ice my thoughts. Can't turn down the volume. I can't turn the knob to "off." The more I try, the louder the static, the more intense the voices. I've tried creating new thoughts to replace the disruptive pre-existing thoughts, but the result is just cumulative, more and more thoughts piling on until all there is to do is listen to the maddening, creepy dry rustle of them writhing and tumbling atop and in and around one another like a den of snakes.

Thank you, Mrs. Roosevelt

"What are you?" I rasped.

It smiled. 

"Whatever scares you."

                                                                                     

                                                       -- Kim Harrison, Dead Witch Walking

Magazine face with eyes and a lizard 4-15-13

 "I must not fear. 

Fear is the mind-killer. 

Fear is the little-death that brings total obliteration. 

I will face my fear. 

I will permit it to pass over me and through me. 

And when it has gone past I will turn the inner eye to see its path. 

Where the fear has gone there will be nothing. 

Only I will remain."
        

                                                                       -- Frank Herbert, Dune

  

Magazine face (2) with eyes and a lizard 4-15-13

Eleanor Roosevelt famously once said: "Do one thing every day that scares you." 

She was basically saying "face your fear," but with an important twist.

Notice that Mrs. Roosevelt didn't say, "Look at one thing that scares you." 

Because you can look all damn day at something you fear. But fear doesn't blink. It just looks back. Like those staring contests when you were a kid. Eyes wide open, watering. Waiting for the other guy to blink first. Trying like heck not to. But that's just a standoff, really, a deadlock where nobody ever emerges a clear winner. And if someone wins, who really cares? What do you get? Dry eyes, that's all.

Mrs. Roosevelt also didn't say, "Talk about one thing that scares you."
Because you can talk all damn day about what scares you. Blah, blah, blah-dee, blah. Fear just gets off on the attention.

That's why the girl in today's face is speechless. There's a void where her mouth should be. Cuz that lizard is in no mood for chit chat. And nothing she could say will make it go away anyway.
Because fear doesn't discuss.
Fear doesn't "dialogue."
Fear doesn't  give-and-take.
Fear just takes.
Fear takes a lot.
Fear takes a lot of time.
Fear takes a lot of energy.

Mrs. Roosevelt said "Do."
She said "Do one thing every day that scares you." Because doing something is powerful.
Once you look at something, it's looked at.
Once you talk about something, it's talked about.
But once you do something, it's done. 
It's done, even if the doing simply means waiting for the fear to pass -- to skitter away on it's little lizard feet and go stalk someone else.

I'm not going to list my fears here because:
A: The list is too long, and 
2: Listing them won't make my fears go away. They'll just be all like, "Hey! Check it out! We're on a list!" Like they got their damn name in the paper pr something. I don't want to give them the satisfaction.

But I will say that doing this blog every day scares me. It scares me because it bumps up so hard against so many of the fears that are on my list. 
And that's exactly why I do it.
Every day.
Because it scares me.
Every day.
This project, these faces -- this is how I "do" something about my fears.
Every day.

Thank you, Mrs. Roosevelt.