False Evidense Appearing Real.

It's high time I wrote about my Fear. Something I've been struggling under for over five years now.

I reluctantly admit to some point, I am an Emetophobiac. "Emetophobia is an intense, irrational fear or anxiety pertaining to vomiting." (Wikipidea) Yeah, we're the freaks who are afraid of vomiting, of sick people, and anything else having to do with being ill.. How stupid is that Right? That's about as bad as saying: "Hey guys, will you go to the bathroom with me? I'm scared of peeing..."

I remember as a little kid I caught a bug from a relative named Aurora, and early the next morning I woke up not feeling so good. I paniced, running around the house until I threw up, then shaking, pale as a ghost, and curled up in a ball I shivered staring at the toilet for a good 15 minutes. I was literally white as paper.. And that panic bore into my mind. As the day wore on though, the the fear eased off until it was just annoying, being under the constant ache till that afternoon. It was one of the longest days I've had to endure. Later on that afternoon I wouldn't think twice I'd just throw up and keep on breathing. For some reason my fear disappeared once I learned that I didn't have to gag, choke, cough very hard to clear my air way, but instead my stomach did all the work. I just had to open my mouth and voila, another of God's miracles of the Human Being occurred.

That was all fine and dandy, till one fate filled night, I was sleeping outside during a very windy evening. I don't remember why or what happened, but I was very afraid of the wind roaring past, we didn't have a tent up cause we where on out back deck, and my brother along with everyone else was asleep. I felt very along, and suddenly I couldn't take it anymore. I still don't know why, but I became deathly afraid, and nauseous. I ran inside from the wind, and I think all my fear tuned into that nauseous paniced feeling, and suddenly I was an emethopobe. Just like that my fear from those few years ago returned, and I was gripped again, panicing, running around the house trying to calm down. I remember crawling into bed with my Mom and focused on my heart beat entirely.

At one point I thought: "Gee maybe I should just get over this now. What if I wait and it becomes some monstrous fear that could grip me for years yet to come?... Nah I'll get over this later, but it won't be that long."

The next morning I woke up to a completely normal day. Until I remembered what had happened the night before. Suddenly I felt sick again, and the entire panic process repeated. I sat in a chair and focused on my heart beat to calm myself down while my mother drove out to QFC to buy some Pepto Bismol. When she got back, and I learned that this pink stuff can stop you from feeling sick. I was hooked. It was the safety catch, my last resort and security blanket.

From that day on I've never been beyond of reach of it save for one day. From that day on it's become my biggest ball and chain, destroying all my precious dreams and plans for life. As life went on it got worse. I found out that my fear expanded to what ever could potentially make a person feel sick. If I read that heights could make a person sick, I began to fear heights in relation to throwing up, if I read that being on boats could make a person sick I began to fear boats and the sea in relation to my throwing up. This has recently become an acute sense of motion sickness in relation to driving or riding in a car. Also I got ill if a certain set of circumstances weren't met. Like if I went to another town, I felt ill. It wasn't home. I discovered that you could take 4 doses, which would last one hour each, and I've been living in that small cage for nearly 5 years. Just 4 hours to make sure I'm comfortable, to find another way to stop this... I always carried a bottle in my backpack, and this is why I always have a backpack with me. Always within reach. Damn Thing..

So many stories of days spent in fear. Every time, Every Time, we'd pick up mail for a theatre organization we worked with from it's PO Box. I was afraid. I was afraid because I would be told to go jump out and grab the mail, while the car wouldn't find a place to park, and would leave me there. Out of reach of my backpack. At least that's what I thought, but strangely, it never happened that way.

So many times when we drove somewhere I had to come up with a bogus reason that I brought my backpack with me. Or I had to reason with my folks to let me bring it in the cab of the car on long road trips, where we where all packed in there, instead of leaving it in the trunk like normal people would.

Only this last year did I ever take a step against my fear by going on DCLA. An 8 day trip to LA and back with my church, much farther than 4 hours from home, or my normal sense of security.
I decided that my fear must die, and I just had to have enough courage to step onto that bus. For the six months before that trip I never slept a peaceful night. I just saw myself freaking out in a hotel in LA and panicing till something dire happened. Like me throwing up, or throwing myself out a window instead of facing this.. But went I did, and by God's good Grace, never felt a pang of fear. Instead I have fond memory's of placing a rubber chicken in my counselors bed, staying up late writing at the desk, or really enjoying a rare sense of peaceful rest. That's what happens when you walk in faith. God is good, and he was patient with me beyond whatever I thought I was worth. You can read more about DCLA in "Familiar Places" I didn't mention that my fear was my biggest challenge on that trip. But it was, and it was my reason for going.

I've gotten fed up with my fear lately. I know that God made me for so much more in this life. He made me a warrior, and to be one of those crazy guys who'd go to Brazil on five seconds notice with a wild youth group. Recently I decided that despite what I read online, I can get free from this. I have God the one and true God on my side and we're knocking this out of Satan's hand. So my plan is simple, take one step ahead every time, and don't look back. So far that's become that I poured out my two bottles of Pepto Bismol, hanging onto a small one ounce container, that I'm always pouring out more and more from. I'm down to about 15mins protection , and sorta stuck lately. However, long ago I promised to that God, that I'd never let this follow me into my life as an adult. So I will pour that out before the 18th of April, a date closing in faster than I'd like.

I haven't said a lot of things. I never told my family, I never told my Dad cause I knew he'd just force me through it like it was nothing. I never told my Sister cause I was embarrassed by it. I never told my brother cause he really wouldn't know what to say or do anything to help me through it. Everywhere I look I can only see people throwing me into fear, never comforting me in my moment of terror. I see this fear as meaningless to so many cause it's nothing, it's something that happens everyday and if anyone saw my fear they would just force me through it or laugh.

God how often I wish someone would just hold me and tell me that I'm normal despite this temporary set back, that It's ok to be afraid of this and I'll get over it soon, and that they understand just what the intensity of my fear feels like, and that I'm not stupid for being afraid of something obscene like vomiting, and walk this world free from it's sadistic grasp.

Sickness Poem

I wrote this poem earlier last year. It was only six months ago, and yet it feels like an age since. I know I've grown some since I wrote this, and felt such a way. But recently times have been laying heavy blows, and I've felt pangs of a previous stigma. I'd like to say I've improved, but I feel like I've lost ground in My War. Either way, it helps me feel better just to post this here. Kind of detoxifying my soul by posting all my garbage out here.

Sickness reigns inside once more,

the Demon malice conquers more,

hatred anger betrayal belittlement,

begin to settle upon life's minute filament.

My dreams and aspirations lay,

brutalized in most every way,

my manor twisted,

my demeanor reversed,

the man in the mirror becomes sickly perverse.

A soul sits, in the lonely rain,

watching the body spoil itself vain,

attention begets this heartless wretch,

as it draws closer its recent catch.

Ah! The stench of boastfulness is putrid most,

portraying upon it's scared precious host,

a decadent sense of conceit.

Oh My God, it happens again,

this wretch slays another beautiful friend.

Many who dare near, see lost to fear, a man once seen.

Honor seems lost, upon the hindered man,

whom felt the battle lost, before it began.

Once pristine, blessed with innocence.

Yet no more, a blood debt lost,

to his violent war.

Daily in anguish he twists contorted,

on his journey unsupported,

fighting the Demon forbidden pleasures,

counts fall blackly against his ledger.

His soul there perched,

parched for love,

is very much the broken dove,

jealously anger rage, berate,

beginning to brake his final gate.

Sorrow floods his heart stripped bare,

naked shown his every care,

a guttural cry sounds out in his soul,

his body though weak shows little at all.

Left with less that he began,

shows himself the mortal man,

a fractured boy of but seventeen,

lost this gift, no longer gleams.

Contemplating a hate filled past,

will this man leave to rest, what hate will last?

Will he become more than before?

Will he decide to shine evermore?

But what little choice does each man possess?

That he should attempt to become his best.

Familiar Places,

I'm listening to Tobymac. He's cool. He's a Christian hip hop artist, and I've been listening to him for a while. His music leads me to this little place in my mind, where many nights ago, I was up late reading a webcomic called "the-white board". It's about a polor bear who runs a paintball shop in Alaska, but that's not really important.

What matters is, it's linked to a little slice of peaceful emotion. Where I lived in a house that I was happy in, in a neighborhood that felt like home, with my family always near at hand. In a basement that I was taught in and really grew up at. Not that I remember all those years of homeschool in that basement very clearly... But it was home.

Not where I'm at now. Right now I'm in a new chapter in life where I have to ford new rivers, face old and new fears, adjust to new paces and places. Lord the last eight months.... They've been little more than pain. tsk tsk tsk.....

So let's start a year ago. At the beginning of 2009. I got a form in the mail from my church to register on this crazy trip to LA for 8 days. I thought "That's farther then I've ever been, longer then I've gone without family", I shredded it. I thought on it for a while, and a little note ("We think you should join us! Hannah.J") attached to the form caused me to think farther than "I can't do it". I called up Mellisa our youth pastor an hour after I shredded the form. Got a new form set, and thought some more. Fear gripped me, but friends affirmed I'd make it alright, and one guy told me he'd go the whole way right along side me. (God I wish he could've made it, but that's another story) So six months before the trip I make the commitment to go. Hold that thought and change subjects with me for a moment.

That was when I was living in Des Moines Wa, and at this point my family needs to decide what to do regarding my Grandfather who is in faltering health. My mother spent easily half of her every day over at his house tending to his needs, and we'd visit regularly to tend to the yard or house. Options: Move him in with us. Move him into assisted living. Move in with him.
Back to previous subject, thanks for your patience.

I didn't sleep well for those 6 months before that trip. Every night I spent anywhere from forty minutes to two hours tossing and turning in my bed thinking the trip over. Waiting for sleep to finally come, I would stare at all the familiar sights... My ceiling, closet doors, posters, corner posts of my bed, this wall, that wall, my hands. I would do speed drills of field stripping my pistol with my eyes closed, would do push ups, sit ups, crunches, stretches. But I was committed and would hold my course even if it should kill me.
Hopping Trains again.

My family decides to move in with my Grandfather in West Seattle, mainly so my Mother doesn't spend so much time away from her family at his house. Or doesn't have to do twice the house work everyday on top on a consistently exhausting job. I was excited to move back to West Seattle, back to my home town, back to something familiar like it used to be when I was little. I was so distraught over moving to Des Moines now 10 years ago, it would be nice to get back home.
Take my hand, and a step back to our last thought.

I went on the trip and I never had a moment of fear while I was on it, made some amazing new steps in my life, made amazing new friends, and had so much fun, took in so many new sights, I didn't want to go home. I spent three days on the road, got a double blow out on the way there. Spent four days in LA at the most amazing youth conference I've ever been to (DCLA 09) , and three days back home with another blow out. I really didn't want to go home, not back to the same problems I tried to get off my chest at that retreat. I felt victorious.
I survived the adventure, and was back to the safety I held precious for six months before that trip. But at the same time I was frustrated now seeing that safety wasn't worth as much as the trouble it was tied to, and challenging fears and taking steps in faith to grow away from what bothers me was so much more precious. (If that made any sense).

When I arrived home though, it was closer, and farther than what I had imagined. I wouldn't ever see those familiar evening sights from my room. I was moved into my Grandfathers house.

Since then things have gotten more and more difficult. Moving into a new house, under the rule of a different man gave me some precious leeway against my fathers old rule. But it was short lived.
I'll come back to that if you'll walk with me down this trail for a moment.

When I arrived at My Grandfathers house it was work work work, though most of the hard moving was complete. I walked downstairs still carrying the heat and tan from California, into the dark dank basement of my Grandfathers house. I was showed to my new room. No more the comfortable second level fortress, familiar place called my room, my safe haven. It was now merely my My bed sitting barren in the middle of a old game room with a bar in the back of it, and only one meager window small.... It remains one of the strangest sights I've been expected to call home. It sicked me inside, and as much as it was exciting as all moves are, it also held that awful sense of it'll never be the same. That was one of the hardest things about living here, was living in the basement....

Now, like I said my Grandfathers sage rule of this house was short lived. We enjoyed his company day and night for only three months as I later found out at 11:45pm on September 25 2009, when my Grandfather passed away in Illinois on a family trip back to his home. The blessing in this was, that he saw his home, his familiar sights, his house where he was a little boy, one more time before he passed, and was buried near his first wife, from whom he'd been separated for so long.

After this, his chair in front of the TV, became my fathers TV chair... The places he'd been, became the territory of my father, some how desecrated by the image of that now bitter rival. I began to hear the same man who lived in the last house, now without my Grandfathers ears to hold back his tongue. The head of the table, the upper most corner in this house, the dear chair in front of the television, the lands once held by that kind and quiet man. Now lay conquered by my Father. Boisterous, commanding, and irritating, I felt it closing in, the stress, the constant observation, the lack of space!

The only place I still have peace is the roof top hiding place outside the bathroom window. It still holds some sense of originality blended with small memories of sneaking out there as a boy. It holds flavors of the first kingdom reigned by my Grandfather, and is the image you see at the top of this page.

I've felt it every day sense I first arrived from LA. I am only visiting my Grandfathers house says the voice in the back of my head. After visiting this place for 17 years. It's hard to see it as anything else, by way of memory there is no room left to make a new home for myself here. It remains, my Grandfathers house. Eight months, Now dead.. And I have to live in it, alien, unfamiliar still.....

James 1.2-8.
² My brethren, count it all joy when you fall into various trials, ³ knowing that the testing of your faith produces patience. ⁴ But let patience have its perfect work, that you may be perfect and complete, lacking nothing. ⁵ If any of you lacks wisdom, let him ask of God, who gives to all liberally and without reproach, and it will be given to him. ⁶ But let him ask in faith, with no doubting, for he who doubts is like a wave of the sea driven and tossed by the wind. ⁷ For let not that man suppose that he will receive anything from the Lord; ⁸ he is a double-minded man, unstable in all his ways.

It's another interesting view though, since this was my Mothers familiar place, her safe haven when she was little, so to her she is home again....

Places, faces, and stuff. That shouldn't be what makes my sense of security. It should be who I know I am, who I know my God is, and where I know I will find my friends.


Everything changed after I finally took and stand and stepped out in faith going to LA at the beginning of 2009, I need to take another step. Amazing things happen when you do.

I shall have to find myself, and my confidence, to make a new place of peace in my own home. That's the only way I'll find peace now is moving out into my own place.... Thank You Lord for how at least this leaves me no path but to grow...

As MercyMe would say "Ohh Ohh you know it's gonna be alright"

Evan Curtiss.

Bombarded by too much.

Tonight too many things bombard my mind. I need an outlet, a place where I think people would read them, but at the same time a place I would like to call safe.

I really don't enjoy writing in a journal. Maybe it is my dislike of writing by hand (Though that's a skill I would enjoy using more), maybe it is my knowing no one will read what I write.

I'm very connected to people, and others in all things. I hate being alone. Maybe that's why I'm finally writing something out to be seen. Either way it is my intention to leave a blog only for those I really trust.

Tonight I come to feeling lost. Having too many options, too many things to say, to think, be or become. Life has too many layers, too many roads, too much to choose from in my mind. Too many things to be labeled with, or judged by. Too many people to choose from in life, too many girls near my mind, too many fears getting to the grind, it's going to halt; Who I am or should let myself be. I can't see who I am.

Do you ever feel that?

I really dislike how I don't have a rocksolid image of who I am to lean on when everything else falls to hell. Until then I have a few friends who I will divulge little to, and cookies. It'll last me I suppose.

I tried to find out where I'm from, or going to. I didn't find much, as life in my mind has become a great ball of spaghetti. So, I isolated three problems that have led me to where I'm at.

1. Poor Relationship with God above.
2. Lack of adults I can trust to talk to about anything... (This shows in that I'm talking to the internet about my problems....)
3. Lack of confidence due to letting fear run my life.

Maybe I'm closer to solving this slum than I thought. This isn't really supposed to say anything genius, or be a call for pity. I just need a place to think outloud really. Good Night Dear Void.