Dear Me, I'm Listening

I'm Afraid

It's easy to be afraid of something trivial, of what feels like an okay fear to have. Chances are, countless others share those same fears.

I'm afraid of the dark. I'm afraid of spiders. I'm afraid of forgetting what to say in front of a room full of subtly judgmental people. I'm afraid of dying. I'm afraid of not knowing what to do with my life. I'm afraid. 

But I'm not afraid to admit these fears because they're "admittable," commonplace, understandable, expected even. They don't detract from my sense of normalcy. 

They're fears that I can openly share with others, that I can toss around like popcorn as if I'm sitting for a movie in the living room because I don't have to explain myself. People get it. And when people get it, there's no reason to psychoanalyze, to dwell on the subject. I can just accept it. I can carry on. 

But there are those fears that linger. Isolate. Deprecate. 

Sometimes it's like I'm altogether afraid of my life and afraid to live it. I'm afraid to be around people who know me. At best, they think they know me because I can't bring myself to trust them enough to know for sure. 

I'm afraid to get in other people's way, always apologizing and feeling like a waste of space, a pest, a burden, a nuisance, a liability. It's messed up, so much so, that I'd rather run the risk of getting pulled over by the police than stop at a Stop sign for too long and aggravate the driver behind me. (I don't even know the driver. The driver probably doesn't even notice that I'm in front of him. Who cares? For some unfathomable reason, my overly considerate, overly conscious self does.) 

More often than not, I struggle to characterize myself. Outwardly, I'm cool and collected. Inwardly, I flat-out scurry like a mouse who doesn't understand the first thing about jailbreak, terrified by the size of her shadow. It's exhausting. It's overdone. It's unnecessary. At least it should be.

I can walk the walk and talk the talk, but the more confident I act, the less confident I feel. I'm a slave to my fear of being judged. I blow the opinion of others, of strangers out of proportion. 

Approval is my dopamine. And as if to add fuel to fire, my oldest fears from childhood remain frustratingly loyal. They make my waters troubled to begin with. The past can be buried beneath a pile of ash, yet my fears, my should-be outdated sentiments nonetheless carry over. 

And that's not even the half of it. I'm also afraid of running out of time. I live my life as if I'm approaching a series of invisible deadlines. It doesn't matter what I do with my time or how I spend it. I feel that I should be in a rush. But I repeatedly disappoint myself, because what do you know? I just happen to be a chronic procrastinator. Yet whenever I'm unproductive, I feel restless, guilty. It doesn't make sense. Nothing this inconsequential deserves that much deliberation. 

If you want to watch Netflix, then watch freaking Netflix. You don't have to feel like Jasmine trapped in a life-sized hourglass for watching a few too many episodes of an albeit mindless (yet thoroughly enjoyable) tv show. For crying out loud! 

You see? If I ever verbalized these fears, somebody would undoubtedly question my sanity. 

I don't know a lot of people who swim in their inner turmoil like it's hardening cement. I don't know a lot of people who've held onto unresolved feelings for 13 of the 18 years they've been alive.

So I don't blame you for having whiplash or for doing a double take (or several). This is a lot to process, and it's not easy to be on the receiving end.  

But this is only the beginning of a brutally honest and unexpectedly reflective confessional: Mine. Yours (technically). 

Dear Me,

I hope you're listening.