Fear and Change in DQ Country

"Yay, we made it to the Dairy Queen and back without being mugged" is a phrase that carries a mixed emotion. It's not necessarily the type of thing you want to be thinking and feeling in the place you live - particularly when you have a small child and several night classes per semester.

I'm not sure if it's the result of getting older, or becoming a mother, or feeling a bit out of sorts and disconnected after two eye surgeries... but I have noticed an increase in anxiety and concern when it comes to my safety and the safety of my family.

Mind you, it does not help to live in a town with crime stats as high as the major city we once lived in. But I do think that safety, like so much else in life, has to do - at least in part - with one's perspective and mindset.

NPR was doing some strange little story on Anthony Perkins, the actor who played Norman Bates in Psycho, and in conjunction with the story, they interviewed someone who believes that people can sometimes take on the characteristics of loved ones who have died as a way of processing grief.

My grandmother was one of the most fearful women I've known. She was convinced the world around her was dangerous and violent, and I remember her nightly ritual of checking and rechecking each door in the house to make sure it was locked before she went to bed.

I go through the same ritual myself now... and notice some of the same tendencies toward hiding away from the world around us in an effort to stay safe. So... when the college kid who lives two doors down goes peeling around the street at 2am in a car with a tampered muffler, rather than being the first one out the door to tell them to be conscious of their neighbors, I tell Andy to stop flashing the lights because who knows what they might do in retribution.

Much of this current time in my life feels strange and so far removed from the concept I once had of myself. The courageous, charismatic, sexy, playful, edgy, strong, fearless self who emerged in my 20s and early 30s has been replaced by a quiet, careful, uncomfortable, fearful and often unhappy woman who feels somewhat foreign to me.

Whether it's grief or no, whether it has to do with location or perception, I simply know this is not a good place to be. Luckily, I believe wholeheartedly in the possibility of change and the flexibility of life... and so the visualization of a better future - the first step toward evolving the outcome - has already begun.