Self-Reliance

Half way up a vertical wall of ice, when down wasn´t easier that up, and when my body was seizing up with panic because I´m really quite scared of heights (I wobble nervously on kerbs sometimes) and I couldn´t get my crampons deep enough into the wall in order to rely on them to support me if I tried to make progress upwards, it made me really consider the kind of person that I am. It´s hardly news to me that I find if hard to let go and relinqish control, or to accept that some doors in life must clost for others to open and all that triteness, but the implications of this have rarely been so apparent. In order to get any higher, I had to accept the risk of making a bad choice, of failing and of falling, accept that my own incapability would indeed lead me to fall more often than not, but also accept that this wasn´t the end of the world. I had to get to a point where I knew more than in my mind but also in my body (soul? spirit?) that someone had the other end of the rope, and that yes I might hurt myself, but more than likely his grip on the rope would protect me. And even if for some reason this grip didn´t do it´s job, even if I did die, I would at least die in a place that I loved, that I was in for a good reason, and doing something that I could be proud of myself for. Basically, I had to get to a point where I didn´t allow myself to think negatively. I think that was more of a worthwhile exercise than the physical acheivement side of things for me. Lets face it, I´ll never be a champion ice-climber, but if from these experiences I can batter into my thick skull that failure is a neccessary product of progress, and that if I let it frame who I am like I have been doing then I will not, as a person, move in a healthy direction, then I´ll be a better person for it. I need to accept that someone DOES have hold of the rope, either that or actually decide that they don´t and reconcile myself to that fact, and I need to accept my limitations but use them as a point to start from, not blocks to my ability to get anywhere.

I did get to the top of the glacier´s snout. Not by the first route that I attempted, but I did get there and did more besides. When you can´t let yourself give up, oddly enough you don´t. God, who I do still hope is there, although he must be looking atmy life with sadness and horror in the most part if he is, may not be speaking to me a lot at the moment, or I may be deaf to most of it. But maybe the one thing that has repeatedly got through in the past months, as I´ve gradually screwed myself further and further up, is the one piece of guidance that I need. Maybe if I could get to the point where I realise it with my body as well as my mind, I could get a grip again (or get a grip in the first place, I´m not sure having a grip was ever my forte). What God keeps telling me is that I shouldn´t have to change who I am in order to recieve love or be a worthwhile human being. It goes against everything that I´ve let people close to me speak into my life recently, but if I could just stop letting those people dictate my worth, and just accept that I have worth, then that would be a point I could actually make progress from.

Next step: achieving said departure from insecurities. That could take a while! At least now I´m out in the world though, and forging "my own path" as it were, instead of just copying those around me. It´s a start :)