Dear Me,
Today I am terrified;
terrified I will never make it. I will never achieve my dreams. All of the hard
work I have done will have been for nothing, destined to leave me with only
arduous memories. For a while now, it has felt as if all I’ve been doing is
struggling. Struggling to motivate myself, hanging from a cliff by only the
smallest strand of faith that I will be able pull myself back to safety, that I
will ever be on sure footing again. I am afraid that if I jump and am able to
fly that I will awake to find myself crushed by the weighty realization that
all my success was just a dream. There are so many things I want to do and
people I want to meet, but I am so afraid that once I begin my journey I will
make a wrong turn, never realizing that it was wrong. I am afraid I will lose
myself in an illusion that I’m making the right decisions to procure the future
I so desire. I’m also filled with fear that only after I have achieved what I
want, I will discover that it does not fulfill or make me happy, that it was
never what I truly wanted. Do I know myself? Will I ever know myself? Is what I
think I want now what I will still want in the future? What if I change my mind
and that change only throws me to rock bottom? I’m scared, but of what? Am I
scared of failing or of succeeding? Can I be afraid of both? It’s paralyzing,
this fear. It’s suffocating me, yet I still have room to fear that I will never
break its bind. I’m sick of being afraid, yet day after day I continue to
stagnate in inaction. I guess I’m not sick enough. Why? If I were to shed my
fear, I think I could be amazing. I think I could achieve all I want and more,
so why don’t I? Why? If I was truly
honest, I guess I would have to say it’s because though this fear is draining
me, it is something I know and can recognize, something familiar. It’s comfortable.
It feels like a shield that is protecting me from being duped, from being led
astray; it feels like trusty caution. And… now that I think about it, that
feeling is of what I should be most wary, mistaking fear for caution. Caution
can be helpful, fear never will be. Fear is what holds me back; it is the kiss
of death. So, dearest me, my advice today...?
