Fear's impact

I love riding my bike! It's probably my most favorite form of enjoyment, exercise and suffering. Sometimes the suffering is why I ride; I love trying to find the biggest and baddest of mountains because the mountains are a place to test who you are and what you're made out of. Of course with all ascents come descents which can be as fast as 50mph or more on straights and through sweeping turns. When I first started riding I was completely stressed out about descending, I would tense up, my palms would perspire twice as much as usual making my grip slippery and unsure, and every corner I came across I would be on my brakes. In the beginning I hated the suffering of the mountains and I hated the speed and danger of the descents. I eventually became a stronger rider, taking pride in my climbing ability, my ability to suffer more efficiently than others. In time I even grew to enjoy descending. There's no greater or more terrifying feeling than sweeping around a tight turn nearing speeds of 40mph at a 50 degree angle. The feeling of speed and always being on the edge of to far makes descending a rush like no other. I eventually became someone who enjoyed the speed, the thrill, I embraced this feeling because for my entire life I've had this image of myself as someone who didn't like to take risks, someone weak. Now I race bikes, I've grown out of the shell I previously perceived myself to be in. During races you have to push the limits to attain results, my downfall was while chasing a friend down a highly technical descent full of hairpin turns. I knew in the back of my mind that chasing someone descending was probably a bad idea, let alone someone clearly better at descending than myself. I flew through the first few hairpins until I came to a sharp hairpin, I was on my brakes... to make the turn I had to lean deeper but because I was on my brakes I didn't have good traction and my real wheel flew out from beneath me. The bike hit the ground with quite a bit of force and then I slid across the asphalt just as a hockey puck would slid across ice. My upper thigh was thoroughly ripped up, my lycra bibs were torn to shreds and I was sprawled across the ground in slight shock, it was my first major road crash (all the others ended, relatively, peaceful in grass). It's been a month and a half since that crash and since then I have been in search of my confidence. I have crashed on two separate occasions while trying to gain normality in my descending. I have a fear of speed, of dropping hard into a turn, of spotting my line (your bike follows the facing of your head), too worried about hitting gravel, or worse, overshooting my line and flying off the road at high speed. Good descenders require a good dose of insanity stirred with confidence and topped with impeccable technique. I rode with my friend today with the intention of practicing my descents. All I felt was nervous, scared and occasionally excited. He would lead, dropping into sharp corners and achieving 60-70 degree angles! I was definitely impressed but for some reason that didn't do much to reinforce my confidence, occasionally I would try to copy him, the force of gravity flowing through you as you hit the apex, completely amazing. On other corners I felt like I had too much speed and would bail into a driveway or in one case, crash, almost off the mountain... I've never felt more frustrated, more angry with myself than during and after that ride. I don't know what to do to find myself, to find that confidence again.