Continued:

When I was confronted by the coyote less than 3 years ago, it felt like time stopped. But Time resumed on that same afternoon, some time after the confrontation was over (the coyote ran away and into the brush). I haven’t been significantly afraid of being confronted by that coyote or by any other coyote since, and resumed my regular walk- including walking through the same stretch of road-  a couple of days after the confrontation (although with some weapon in my hand, pepper spray or a stick). It all seems so far away now, a memory that is secure in the past.

On the other hand, even though I didn’t see my mother (who lives in another country) in close to 13 years and didn’t talk with her for 11 years (my choice), I am still significantly afraid of her. I’d be afraid to be in the country were she resides in fear that I will find myself in her presence, accidentally. My memories of her are far from being secure in the past. Time has stopped in this context, past is one with the present. I indeed lived in the past for too long.

Fear stops Time for a little while; Anxiety stops Times for decades; too often, it stops Time for a lifetime.

It is beginning to get dark as I am typing this, sitting in bed, looking at the stillness of the outside through the window, alone. Whenever alone, at this time of the evening, I feel anxious, fearing that my mother will die. Not because she is old now, but because when she was 25, and I was 5, she said (in a very emotional, convincing way) that she was going to kill herself. I am re-living now what happened decades ago. In my mind, I am still that 5-year-old, afraid that mother will die.

Anxiety extends the past into the present, and the two are one. Healing is about securing these memories in the past; removing these painful/ scary memories from the Now, and seeing a Now that doesn’t have her in it.

anita