Startling realization

I'm terrified to go on this trip.

Many reasons, oh so many reasons...most of them deep-seated; a few of them, trivial and only bred out of ignorance.

Don't get me wrong; I'm excited and I'm definitely going. I just wonder what's going to happen to me while I'm gone and what'll happen to me while I'm there; ditto for my relationships. I mean, I worry about losing my head while trying to speak Spanish and getting very frustrated ni the more rural sections of Catalonia, but that's something I will just have to deal with. The stuff I'm really talking about is deeper, and seemingly perpetual.

My worst fears of abandonment DO surface at times like these. In my deep-down, secret, not-let-on-to-anyone self, I am frightened to death that people will turn on me if I'm gone. It's the worst sort of paranoia and it makes the usually healthy me a complete wreck. Sometimes, if I give it enough leeway in my mind, I will even take steps to make those fears occur, apparently out of some bizarre form of "self-preservation." Luckily I've curbed that somewhat over the past ten years, since I've built a home for myself in Austin and have gone on lots of far-away trips. But still, it happens.

Here's the deepest stuff, which I know is ridiculous, but still can become very real to me when I'm at my most vulnerable:

I worry that my belongings (what's left of them) will be out on the lawn and the locks changed. Hey, it's happened to me before.

I worry that I'll come to work and find out that my access code doesn't work because they got rid of me while (or because) I was absent. It's also happened before.

I worry that my cats will have died. That hasn't happened before.

I worry that something will happen to my mother while I couldn't get to her. That kind of happened before, with my father.

It's so funny, because overall I'm healthy and happy, but these fears resurface with a vengeance shortly before I do something kind of big. I forgot until today that this is how I get before I go on all of my dramatic journeys.

Hmmmm.....