#beingbrave

Synonyms for Fear: Angst, Anxiety, Terror, Panic, Unease, Worry, Agitation, Dread, Doubt, Timidity 

There is a lot of fear in my life. I’ve always known this about myself. Everyone has things they’re afraid of. And I’m not just talking about being afraid of spiders or heights. Those things are valid. But I’m not talking about phobias of that type. I’m talking about fears that whisper to you, fears that try to speak to the very core of who you are. These are the fears and lies that know which dreams burn brightest, they know your passions, your deepest loves, and they whisper to those parts of who you are. They try to make you feel small and inadequate. They’re the ones that try to cage you in and leave you there to rot, filling every corner of your mind with what ifs until there isn’t room for anything else. This is the fear I’m talking about. This is the fear I see in myself.

I’ve thought a lot about courage this summer. And today I had a conversation with a mentor of mine. She’s also my intern supervisor through school and our conversation was an official debrief about my summer. She knows me well. And I know that she was sensing the fact that I’m floundering a bit on the heels of finishing my internship and navigating post graduation life. Our conversation was fairly short. It accomplished its goal. But we ended on the note that we would talk more next week. I’m grateful for that. She wants to help me process, to navigate everything I’m feeling. To really digest what’s been happening, how I feel about it, and the things I can learn in light of all of that. Our conversation left me emotional. She’s a dear friend and mentor and in the middle of trying to give her concrete answers about how my summer internship has gone, what the challenges have been, what’ve been some of my favorite things and so on, I realized that I’ve been absolutely crippled by fear these last few weeks. My anxiety was sky high when we talked because my alma mater finally posted the job application I’ve been waiting for. I filled it out immediately and submitted it. But in light of that, I was deeply anxious. It felt like I had swallowed fire. My lungs burned, like they do after you run to hard and you can’t catch your breath. And my chest hurt. There’s been a stabbing sensation in my chest all day since filling out that application. You would think that I would feel better right? Part of me does but part of me doesn’t. Because the reality is, I’m desperate for this job. I want it. Badly. And I haven’t done a good job of planning contingencies if I don’t get it. I’ve been struggling under the weight of being present here during my internship and trying to prepare for my next step. 

This combination of events today has brought me back to the realization that I have some deeply rooted fears in my life. And I don’t know what a lot of them are. Not really. I think I tend to gloss over them and try and pretend they aren’t really there. Ignorance is bliss until the damn breaks and suddenly you’re being drowned by the depth and gravity of everything you were trying to pretend didn’t exist. I don’t want to live with fears like these in my life. Because these fears don’t need to shout it at me until I run away. All they need to do is whisper to me, until I think their voice is my own. And before I realize what’s happening, I’ve walked myself into the cage they built for me and locked myself in. They did their job by deceiving me and convincing me that the right choice was to take the key and do the deed myself. Fear will own you if you let it. It will turn you into a shadow of yourself. It’ll shame your identity and convince you that being who you are is the wrong choice. It’ll say that its better to play it safe, you’ll have less regrets by not taking risks, you’ll be better liked if you learn how to wear different masks that project the image of who people want you to be. It will convince you that bowing to other people’s expectations of who you aught to be and not putting in the work to kindle the fire of your passions and hopes and dreams is the right choice. Because that way you won’t get burned. And by doing that, the fire that burns inside of you, the one that flickers with your brightest passions, far flung hopes, and improbable dreams, will die out without you ever even realizing it. And that’s when fear owns you. When you let it force you to your knees by bowing to the expectations of others, when you let it lock you in a cage and hide yourself away from the world, when you let it keep you from stoking the fires that burn in the deepest furnaces of your heart. It cripples you, paralyzes you, haunts you, until it owns you.

“A man that flies from his fear may find that he has only taken a short cut to meet it.” // J.R.R Tolkien, The Children of Hurien // 

I refuse to let fear own me like that. I don’t want to be that person who runs so fast and far from fear that they only meet it all the sooner. I once heard somewhere “Fear is what you feel. Brave is what you do.” Fear will not cage me in. Fear will not paralyze me so that I never stoke the fires of my passions, my hopes, and my dreams. Fear will not whisper to me so sweetly that I soon believe the voice is my own.

I was once on a panel at a writing convention in Oklahoma and made fast enemies with the agent (now an editor) on the panel. Why? Because I disagreed. I’m a pretty mellow human most of the time, but if you say something that I think might not allow people to ascend, to be themselves, or something full of hate? I’m terrible at being silent about that. I mean, I’m not cable-news tv forceful,…

It’s My Birthday (and I’m trying to be brave–possibly failing)

Over on Instagram, I share the motivations quotes of my dogs and cats, which is weird, I know. It’s weird that I give the animals words to hopefully help people instead of Oprah or Tony Robbinsing it and just doing it myself. I would say it’s because I post pictures to get people’s attention and my animals are much cuter than I am. I think that’s part of it. But the other part is that I have a…