2023 Word of the Year: FEAR: Don't Feed the Alligators

 

 

Don't Feed the Gators. Leroy Percy State Park. Mississippi. December 2011. Credit: Mzuriana.

Back in Alamogordo times, I was laying in one of my thrift-store hospital beds, and suddenly laughed out loud. I had been reinventing history via an imaginary conversation between me and some antagonist-of-the-moment from the past - you know, the conversation that should have happened, but didn't. The conversation in which I would have vanquished my foe-of-the-moment with my Michonne-sword wit.

This was the day when I realized that my omnivore brain will guzzle any emotional cocktail that my amygdala, hypothalamus, or pituitary serves up, with not one fuck given for its taste, quality, or provenance. My brain is like that tiger shark in Jaws, which indiscriminately scoops up anything into its mouth that might be food, even if it's a Louisiana license plate.

Is it ironic that an antidote for this fear churn is the same recipe as that for joy? I dunno about that, but I repeat it here:

When I catch myself in a fruitless exercise of rewriting my past or fretting about a future, I say aloud: Here and now, boys, here and now! 

Look around you, girl. Live where you be now. 

It is inside moments, even in fearful times, where I can see joy.

Combat breathing is also good. 

 

Alligators are dangerous. New Iberia, Louisiana. March 2015. Credit: Mzuriana.

 

Yeah, and so those are helpful tools. But when fear turns chronic, such as in PTSD in its various permutations, there is no quick cure. You don't just snap out of it. For a long while, the best you can hope for - strive for - is fear management, until your healthy reserves slowly creep up to a level where you can actually think of healing. Whatever healing looks like.

I'm smiling in this moment because I'm thinking of snails I have encountered. It takes a goodly while for a snail to poke its head outside its shell again after a retreat into its safety. 

Snail in Gori, Caucasus Georgia. August 2011. Credit: Mzuriana.

The 2023 word of the year thus far

1. January: FEAR: Looking Into the Abyss Without Falling In
2. February: FEAR: Fuck Everything And Run
3. March: FEAR: Forgetting Everything's All Right
4. April: FEAR: Take More Risks
5. May: FEAR: Feelings Expressed Allow Relief
6. June: FEAR: Face Everything And ... Rise
7. July: FEAR: Frustration, Ego, Anxiety, Resentment
8. August: FEAR: Face Everything And ... Recover 
9. September: FEAR: Freedom and Imprisonment