Why Do I Startle?

I wrote this the other day, using a method my therapist taught me of just following my stream of consciousness and not censoring what I write (which explains how fragmented it seems). The question floating in my mind above it all was "Why do I startle?" and this is what became of it. (Beware of graphic images that may present themselves in the mind's eye...well, depending on how imaginative you are. )

Fear - fear of something big, cruel, wants to hurt me, vicious, mean, glinting eyes, monstrous; take something from me, use me, dispose of me, kill me, hurt me, mangle me, strip me of everything, eat me, cut me, hit me, kick me, rape me, mock me, break my heart, leave me bleeding, laughing cruelly, grab me, kidnap me, terrify me, control me, steal my essence, leave me broken, curse me, haunt me, commandeer me, appropriate me, stunt me, prevent me, ruin me, touch me, rape my heart, strip me of everything, break me, insult me, objectify me, ignore my protests, hold me down, enrage me, helpless, frustrated, crying, fighting, losing, screaming, helpless, noone to hear, noone to help, at his mercy, tied, gagged, caged, starved, tortured
PAIN - pain is why I startle; fear of pain on all its forms. Scratch me, bite me, force me, shoot me, break my bones, slash my skin, make me ugly, demean me, tear off my fingernails, pluck out my eyelashes, cut out my tongue, scalp me, drown me, pull my teeth, cut off limbs, draw & quarter me, feed me to animals...
Fear of the dark, fear of the empty, fear of being alone, fear of being snatched. Why this fear? Who did this? Who planted this fear...


And there it is: raw, graphic, real. It actually helped, putting it all on paper. I actually kind of looked at it and thought "is that all? that's all I'm worried about?" which I know, sounds like a crazy thing to think after all that, but to me it was more of a breath of relief, because I know I can prevent 99, if not 100 percent of all of these things from ever happening, or (for some) happening again. I realized something in looking at it. I've always feared some sort of monster, a kind of half man, half demon type of creature, but such a fear is unfounded as such a beast doesn't exist and this realization hit me in the form of a short verse "If it's human I can hurt it; if it's not it can't hurt me" and that was it. That was the realization I needed, the reassurance that I can protect myself. Jamie would agree that my punch is hard and fast and a few of those should render anyone helpless. Even if my assailant (more specifically a "he") had a gun to my head I have the resources to disarm him. Crazy huh? All it took was a little thought, coming out of that paralysis of fear to say hey, I can beat whatever might want to do this to me. Haha, I have to admit though that the movies don't help matters. The 15-minute fighting scenes are a little disheartening... I'm pretty sure I wouldn't hold up that long. Jamie assured me though that it's not like that in real life. People in a LOT of pain don't keep on coming. Then I asked him about people on drugs, because apparently those do a lot to dull the pain. He said that that's when you start breaking bones because noone can use something that's broken. So anyway, this helps me deal with my fear, but doesn't root out the underlying cause. I'm pretty sure how to answer the last questions of my little monologue. That's actually in another letter I wrote about two or three years back. Maybe I'll post that one too; although that one's kind of heavier matter.