h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Hopefully, all things are eventually forgiven

A few years ago, my life was nowhere near as well-defined as it is right now, and it's still pretty darn fuzzy I was in a marriage which wasn't working out, and my husband had turned into a very scary man. I think, in hindsight, he was just insecure (aren't we all) but he did go out of his way to make me frightened of him and keep me that way.

When I left him I was very frightened indeed, and from that time til the present day, I still have a tendency to sleep with my eyes open And what started out as a matter of merely being high strung had developed into a full-fledged PARANOIA!!!!!

Now, this is no kind of attitude to have.

"Just because you're paranoid doesn't mean they're NOT out to get you".... riiiiiight....

Thing is, it's not just me. The human race seems to have been stuck in a fight-or-flight state of extreme jumpiness for about a century now. People in their 40's and 50's talk about their experiences in elementary school, doing bomb drills... as if crawling under your desk would protect you from the wrath of an atom bomb. The "Age of Anxiety" never really ended--it just went underground with the end of the cold war. Recent events represent a new flowering of this fear. It's all about fear, fear, fear. Fear and anger. It feels better to be angry than fearful...I know. The night I woke up with a burglar in my bedroom last year I grabbed a stick and went after him, where three years ago I would probably have lain there paralyzed with fear. Luckily for me, the intruder ran away from the cursing, spitting banshee that rose suddenly from the bed... if he'd had a gun, things would probably have been much worse for me. Anger isn't the solution either, but then again I make no claims of being enlightened

There's a whole lot more of this I could bandy about but I haven't the time right now. Suffice it to say that karate is helping a lot, and I'll return to this later