July 16, 2008 – One night some time ago I felt a wave of fear – terror, really – that was so strong I was not sure I would survive it, or bear it for another hour. It was overwhelming, paralyzing, very physical. I realized it was not new, but quite old, buried deep and for good reasons, and that I had been hiding from it for much of my life.
 I was perpetually in hiding, I thought, surrounding myself with many things that might protect me from these fearful and nameless feelings.
  At the time, I had a choice. I could turn to God, which would be something, and I knew I needed help, so I had a choice to make – God or therapy.
  I chose therapy, because I had to become an authentic person, and that I had hard work to do, and no one was going to do it for me, including God, and I didn’t want to add one more thing to hide behind. To me, the experience made me feel like an onion – peeling off one layer after another, until you get down the core, which was – is – really something.
  I value  hard work, very much, it is almost my religion, and I believe it is often rewarded, and it is essential to accomplishing anything worthwhile. And it was – is – hard work. If you don’t accept who you are, or know it, then how can you possibly know much else?
  I am lucky in my friends, most of whom seem to know about fear, and who are loyal and loving people, and my family, and they hung in there with me, day after day, night after night, and I learned some valuable lessons for myself. Ask for help, take it. Face yourself. Know who you are, and where you are in life. Do not permit your life to be taken from you, not by fear, or by anything or anyone else. Being authentic is better than being in hiding, if you can get there. And believe me, it is a lot less scary.
   I did not want to spend my life in hiding, absolutely not, and hiding is yet another  terrain that simply must be crossed, even if you don’t believe you can ever cross it. In my hospice work, I meet people all the time who are on the edge of life, approaching a different kind of terrain, one they must cross.
 Everyone one of these people teaches me something I did not know about life, because they are nearly free of it, and have no need of hiding any more.
  So I remember this sense of dread – I might built a shrine to it – and I appreciate it. How lucky I was to have experienced it.
  And is there a message in this? I don’t know. I am learning about myself, always and forever, until the hospice people come one day to chat with me, and I can’t really tell other people what to do and to feel, nor do I think I know.
    I don’t like talking about these things anymore than anyone else, surely not in the open, but it has been good for me to be open, by and large, and I have learned that it matters to other people in the night, to know that someone else is there, and knows how they feel, and to say that it can be all right to feel this way, and you can get past it. So I do it. I am bearing witness. I am coming out of hiding.