You know, I see ingrained reactions (such as your expectation that you'll be harangued for a fuckup over and over and over again) as an old, boring, but familiar dance. We know the dance, we hate it, but it's familiar, so we keep dancing it over and over again.

And then we get a new partner and they take an unfamiliar step, and while it may keep us away from the parts of the dance that hurt us, it's not familiar, so it's shocking.

Lin didn't dance the dance you're accustomed to, did she?

*hug* Learn a new dance, hon. This one is healthier.

It's scary though. Things that are outside our experience are hard to handle because we have no experience with wqhat to do when they occur.

So anyreaction we have has the potential to go very right. Or very wrong. And it's that second possibility that's so scary. We are walking blindfolded and we don't know where the edge of the cliff is.

(But please don't be normal. Normal is BORING. *snug*)

In this case "normal" is being used as the opposite of "abnormal". Or perhaps "dysfunctional".

Besides, I could stand to have some aspects of my life be boring.