(Author's Note: Hurro, and welcome to the new blog. I've gotten annoyed with posting notes on Facebook, so I've moved my electropapyrus scrawls over here. This note wasn't tagged on Facebook, so there's a good chance you missed it a few weeks back. When I post online, I usually don't say everything that's on my mind. Why? One of the main points of me posting on Facebook is to make your day. I love getting messages telling me of how my humorous commentary on life has made their day, I thrive on that, so generally, I don't post anything too serious. This is one of my rare unguarded posts, pouring my soul out in a moment of weakness. I hope you find solace in knowing that someone else struggles just like you.)
It's two in the fricking morning. This past weeked has included the hardest days of my life, bar none. I have Relient K cranked in my ears and some sort of inkling of hope in my heart. And in this dark, snow-covered solitude, I'm discovering one of my worst fears:
I am terrified of failure.
Not just terrified, but so completely and utterly broken to the point that I don't want to start anything that has any weight to it because I might screw it up, because I might do something to stumble, to make myself the fool.
As anyone that knows me is aware of, I'm good at a few things. I can make people laugh, I have a passable singing voice, and sometimes I can make the mechanical beasts known as computers do my bidding. I can lead a paintball squad with a boisterous tone, I can beat your time in Super Meat Boy, I have a knack for noticing odd details about people. I'm a lyricist, a lover, a good friend.
But ask me to go beyond that?
Oh, HECK no.
I have an inability to function outside of my comfort zone, and as soon as that zone is breached, I devolve into some childish, whimpering form of myself.
Outside of my box, I can fail, I can mess up, I can screw something up, I can embarrass the people I care about, the people that brought me up, the friends that have my back. I am frozen.
For instance, college.
I've been saying for years that I'd go. Years. I'm just now starting my first year of college at NESCOM come January. I just discovered an invoice from them, a gargantuan amount of money plastered on it, a gorilla of numeric preportions.
Freeze. Whine. Cower. Rinse. Repeat.
What happens if I can't pay this? What happens if I start, but can't finish? What will my fiance think, her family, my family, those closest to me? Isn't it just easier to just stay put, hunker down at my job and make a living out of retail, living out my small, quiet life with my wife-to-be? Wouldn't that be less risky than this grand unknown of college payments and years of student loan repayment?
And speaking of wife-to-be, my word, Aaron, what are you thinking? You proposed to the girl that has done nothing but captivate you for the last three years, but seriously, what the frick were you thinking? Don't you know that marriages fail all the time? Don't you know that you're going to be confined to a daily grind just to provide for your family? Who in the world are you to have the nerve to take a daddy's only daughter? And my word, children? What qualifies you to be a parent? You are entering the deepest reaches of your ability to fail.
Eventually, I calm down, find out what I can do and drive towards it.
But the fear, the fear stays.
My confidence wanes outside of this box I've made for myself. "The only things I will truly be able to do," I tell myself "are contained in this tiny box."
Oddly enough, I always believe myself.
I never think to break the cursed thing.
I never stop to think that the God I claim as my own, the God I say is the Lord of my life, the Savior of my life, has made sure that I'm not damned to a life of mediocrity, that this God I lean on for my daily needs just might be big enough to handle my failures.
I never even ponder that maybe my fiance will still love me even if I fall on my face, that our love is pure and will last a lifetime, that maybe her parents don't completely hate me, but are just concerned for their child's well-being.
I don't stop to meditate on the strength my family has provided me over the years, that I'm never going to be a failure in their eyes, no matter how hard I try, and that their arms are always extended to me, a safe haven in a world of storms.
I never notice the friends that are my support structure, my rocks of common sense, ready to listen, to help, to comfort.
No, no, this rotting crate that I confine myself is much too strong. It's safe here, I reassure myself.
There is nothing more exhausting than living my life in fear of letting the ones I love down.
