Hiding and Seeking

"Hiding out, with my head buried in a book waiting for someone to rescue me from my life."

I was listening to a woman book reviewer being interviewed today (I can't remember her name or I would give her the credit she deserves), when she made the above statement....my immediate response was.....I did that for so many years of my life, from early childhood well into adulthood.

Did I conciously realize I wanted rescued?
No, but in a sense that was exactly what it was.
For most of my life reading, books, have been my escape from life, from the drama, from the trauma of my childhood and teen years. But it didn't stop there, it continued in my adult years also. Hours and hours lost in other worlds, worlds of words.

For a few years, after I found the world of chat and even blogging I traded one addiction for another, or actually just added another, I still read, I cannot think of a time when I don't have at least 3 half-read books sitting on my bedside table, with more stacked on the floor beside it, and usually another in the backseat of my car, and one or two in my brief case. Which is really beside the point, it just keeps me from having to contemplate my next step in the journey. For years I avoided that, so I ask myself, did I, or even do I hope that someone will come along and rescue me?

A good friend recently mentioned to me that there are some people in our world who are rescuers, that is how they escape their own personal demons, by rescuing another who they think are in need. Even to the point of ignoring that the rescuee doesn't really want to be rescued by them. I have had one in my life, and ya know what? I didn't like it, didn't like it one bit. It frustrated me, caused me hours of worry, in fact I ended up thinking I had to rescue them from themselves.

So I am hoping that means that I am past the point of wanting someone else to fulfill that need within me, that I am ready to do any rescuing that needs to be done myself.

So my next question of course, is how do I accomplish that? Not an easy question to answer, in fact usually when that question arises I think I am evading that seeking of answers by picking up the nearest novel and reading. Or I get online, seeking distractions of one sort or another.

But in that process I have also began to discover things about myself because I am in fact not really hiding anymore, I am seeking the answers, and in finding those answers, in finding some of those very things I have kept hidden from myself, I learned that some I don't really like, but some I have liked, do like, and that in itself for the shy little girl hiding out in the weeping willow tree reading her book is a very big deal.

There are still demons I have decided not to face quite yet, still answers I am afraid to learn, but each step in the quest is a step forward, albeit sometimes a very small one, and there are times when I stand on the edge of a precipice, teetering, full of vertigo, wondering if I can or will take the plunge, will I plummet to the rocky ground below, or I will I find crevices along the way to sink my fingers into, to slow my descent?

Somehow, I have lost that mind and body freezing sense of danger, the fear is still there, I think it has to be, but I no longer feel my soul well up with an overload of negative energy when my toes are curled there on the edge, there is a different feeling in the air, at times one of almost magical properties, one that makes my soul sing.