Inner feeling

Sometimes I feel fear for no reason at all.  It's not simple this fear for it lacks all proper response.  It stands invisible within my spirit; there's nowhere to run and nothing to fight.  My biological instincts have no defense against the type of fear that comes from so deep.   While in the midst of this fear I am easily reminded that I haven't really faced any sort of tumultuous reality.  At the moment, I'm at the end of the novel, Memoirs of a Geisha by Arthur Golden.  What a well written piece of literature.  This man seems to be able to capture the feelings of a young girl sold into the world of the geisha as he details her coming of age story.  Reading it, I'm reminded of there are circumstances I'll hopefully never have to learn first hand.  My life is nor was anything like the protagonist and yet I feel like I can directly understand her feelings in certain situations.  There's also that knowledge that I shouldn't understand them.

It's this strange duality that I hate to recognize.  Instead, I insist on only seeing just how badly things could be rather than facing that particularly unpleasant piece of my life.  Normally this works out well for me but it's times like this when I glance at the man next to me with the feeling of such incredible love that this realization of how badly things could be emerges and the intangible fear encompasses me.  I'm terrified that this is just illusion and that one day the powers that be will realize a mistake was made and take it all away.  A long time ago when I was just trying to figure out what it means to be in love with someone, I became convinced that such a love would never exist for me.  Not once did I deny its existence; it was just meant for others and not myself.  Somewhere along the way, I resigned myself to the fact that honest love would not find me.  In my head, I had missed my opportunity and you don't get second chances.  Still, despite finding it and being able to touch and feel him right now if I choose to, I still remain convinced that I lost my chance all those years ago; that somehow what I have is wrong and not meant for me.

These feelings are permanent fixtures and it doesn't seem to matter who says anything to the contrary.  They don't know what I've given up.  My therapist says that I'm resistant to the idea that I'm a "victim."  Maybe she's right but that word isn't used for people like me but rather true recipients of catastrophe.  The word "victim" is for the person who was unable to get out of their situation.  Maybe they were kidnapped or tortured by some malicious sadistic person.  Or maybe they were in the wrong place at the wrong time when mother nature unleashed her power.  They didn't have a choice; they couldn't just walk away for the tsunami or the locked room where they were held captive.  Yes, bad things might have happened to me but in the end I allowed them.  I continued to go back and allow it again and again and again.   So easily, I could have put a stop to it all and broken it off and yet I didn't.  That does not make me a victim; that makes a willing participant.  Everything that was done I could have stopped.  I could have just said, "no" loudly and clearly and stood by it but I didn't.  I was given plenty of chances and I couldn't do what was needed until much later and only then because I was physically able to leave it.  No, I am not a victim.

I've come to a point where I've lost myself in my own words and feelings.  Though I'd like to explain how above thoughts of not being an actual victim and not believing this happiness is meant for me are intertwined.  They go hand in hand but I can't go into how because I don't really know.  Here is where the knot of this thread lies and right now all I can do is rest before I continue on in the effort to untie it.