On Fear

{Now playing: Matthew Sweet, “Sick Of Myself”}

“I am not who you think I am; I am not who I think I am; I am who I think you think I am.”
-  Charles Cooley

Fear is a funny thing. The other day I was looking over the view counts for this and I noticed that there were views on pieces I'd put here that I hadn't linked elsewhere, only a handful, but that still means that some of you are here reading this unbidden. It honestly scared me; I've always imagined this as the place that I shout into the nothing, never really thinking that anyone might be listening, unless I specifically asked for it. Of course this is a public thing, anyone can come here and read it, and I want them to, but it was like walking around talking to yourself and suddenly finding that there have been people watching you the whole time. That's the dichotomy of my life: wanting to be heard, as we all do, but also afraid of it. But then, why cast my voice out into the world at all? Better to let that fear be my motivation than my obstacle. So stick around, bring your friends, and let me put my thoughts in you.

I'm not very good at talking to people. I don't know why that is. I never have been. I can talk, converse, even be funny on occasion, but when it comes time to say anything of importance, to say the words that actually mean anything, I mumble it all away, avert my gaze, and fall silent. I'm embarrassed by my feelings,I  lack any confidence in my inner thoughts, being so sure that everyone around me will see me for the useless idiot I really am. Better to hide behind a fake smile and a witty retort. Better to brush it off and bury the thing I wanted to say with all the others. The field of my mind is littered with uncountable graves.

The search for my voice has been a long and trying thing. Tears have been shed. Screams have been uttered. Fists have been bloodied. At times I've felt like some mad butcher, blood and gristle flecked across my face, chopping, cleaving, and sawing away at all the useless crap.  Cutting and cutting and cutting, fiercely meat digging for that gleaming, thrumming heart, clinging to the notion that there's something worth finding down there amidst all that rotting flesh. A lifetime with that will break anyone. I have much shame but not for that. I don't fault myself for being so twisted up inside by this point that I can't even tell what I want to say half the damn time.  I didn't ask for this, I've never wanted it, I can't find its true source, and I have no idea what to do about it. So I write, I lay it all down like this, because at least this way it's out. I don't ask to be forgiven and I don't ask to be understood. I know what I am. Here, on the page, I am agonizingly close to free. There are no judging gazes here. No painful rebukes. I'm free to be the coward I've always been, I can say what I can't say out there because I don't have to listen to the response. But fear is a prison that keeps you from all yearn to have. Fear is a weight on our back that grows heavier with each turning away, until it grows so heavy you can no longer move forward. Fear is a screaming monster that knocks you down whenever you try to break free and run.

The search for my voice, in life and in my writing is, in many ways, the struggle that has defined me. And it is only in the later part of my life that I have begun to understand that, perhaps, it is not the destination I had imagined it to be but rather a journey that only ends when I do. And isn't that for the best? Long ago I dedicated myself to the idea of being better every day. There's a whole story there, maybe some day I'll tell it, but for now it suffices to say that I came to the conclusion that life really doesn't matter much to me if I'm not doing that. After all, what's the point of being here if you're not going to try and be the best you can be? Why wouldn't you want to end every day as a slightly better version of yourself? What's the point of simply drifting along for a lifetime? I won't fault those who do; a life is a life and it should be lived however one chooses. But for my money a life spent in pursuit of something greater is the only life worth living.

Our struggles define us, push us, make us stronger. Without them we're just motes in the air, aimless, drifting according the the whims of happenstance. That's okay sometimes, I don't believe anyone has the will to struggle constantly, but if that's all you do, you become weakened by it. Any muscle you don't work becomes atrophied over time, and that goes for the mental sinew as well as the physical. The struggle can be painful at times, though. It can bring us to the brink and even take us over it, if we give ourselves to the idea. Perhaps that is the thing that truly separates the artist from the rest: that willingness to deliberately fling one's self over the edge, out into the nothing, and shatter against rocks below, to be remade from that ruined mess into something greater. It isn't easy, it's damned hard to be honest, and the fear that grips a person as they stand on the precipice is unique and all encompassing. We know what waits below, the pain and isolation that will come as we break and then heal. It's enough to make anyone turn away and seek the comfort and security of stagnation. But fear and pain are the way and through them we find the truth of who we are. And who we can be. There's no shame in fear, anyone who claims to be fearless is either a fool or a liar, usually the latter. In fact, fear is our best guide to where we need to go. The greater the resistance we feel on a path the more we can be sure that we are heading in the right direction. The darkest places are all too often exactly the places we must explore if we hope to become what we wish to be.

Yet, there are still limits to what I'm willing to say, even with this distance between you and me. There are things I could say here, things I want to say, but never will. Because, though I can't see you, I know you're there, or at least I imagine you are. My voice is bound by chains of fear I fashioned for myself and I have no idea how to break them. All I can do is prattle on with my all too imperfect words in the hopes that somehow, if I just keep going, if I can just push back at the fear enough times, I will finally drag myself out of this pit and find the courage to speak all the words I've never been able to say.

“Long is the way and hard, that out of Hell leads up to light.”
- John Milton