Fear, Pt. 1

What are you afraid of?
Monsters, spiders, heights?
Not being able to wake up in the morning?
I’ve often wondered what it’d be like to get in a car accident, or fall of the golden gate bridge.
I’m not scared, I’m just not stupid enough to try. I have a life to live.
Does death scare you?
The idea that one day it will all be over, and whatever you’ve done will have to have been enough.
Are you scared of other people?
Of what they think of you, and how that can virtually determine if you enjoy your life or not, because none of us really want to be entirely alone.
Does failure scare you?
The idea that you can pour your entire soul into something and get nothing from it, other than humiliation and half-assed sympathy.
The mediocrity. Falling short.
Wasted potential.
Sometimes a small part of me wishes I’d die young so that at my funeral they’d talk about how much potential I had, and how that had one day been stolen from me by a drunk driver or a disease, instead of my own incompetence.
I don’t fear failure though. If I fail I will start again.
I fear settling.
I fear failing will make me too scared to take risks.
I fear that one day I will be alive to see the choices I made to waste my own potential.
I fear I will turn 42 and find myself in a job I’ve never wanted and am only reasonably good at, in a relationship that would’ve ended years ago if we weren’t too big of cowards to go it alone, with nothing to show for my life other than some good kids who see me as a mom. Practical. Safe.
Not a rockstar.
Not an inspiration.
Not someone who is a testament to what hard work and big dreams can do.
I fear I will sell myself short in life.
I fear interviews, and confrontation, and intimacy, and debt, but more than anything, I fear I will settle.
That is what I fear.

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