On Fear and Shame
When I think about my life, certain facts astound me.
It goes like this:
- I wanted to learn. But at eleven years old, when my father decided to teach me how to ride a bike, I was too embarrassed to be seen by my friends who all already knew how. So I said thanks but no thanks, wormed my way back into my room, and tucked my head into a book. I didn’t learn how to ride until I was twenty-one.
- In my late teens and early twenties, I was in a relationship that I never really wanted to be in. I said yes at eighteen because I wanted someone to buy cute anniversary gifts for, someone who would wander the back woods with me late at night. And I liked him as a person. But we didn’t really ever connect. And still, I stayed with him for years. I felt trapped, I felt discontented, but I was too afraid of the consequences. Of what people would think. Of what his face would look like when I said the words. Even, really, of the words themselves.
- I first visited Colorado when I was twenty-two, fell in love hard, and knew I had to live here some day. Still, it took me until I turned thirty to leave the East Coast. To move where I knew nobody? To a place where the streets weren’t also a historical map of my life? To a world so far from my friends and family? Terrifying.
- All throughout high school, I went to parties but rarely danced. Even when they were dance parties. Even when a really cute boy asked. Ninety percent of the time, I refused. The reason? I felt everybody staring at my body, noticing how awkwardly I moved, judging me.
- As a kid, I couldn’t even ask the man behind the counter for change. Any step outside my daily routine - the people I knew, the things that I’d learned were Acceptable - scared the shit out of me. Around anyone who I believed to be “cooler” than me, my body would tense up and my vocal cords would seemingly disappear. And of course, there were boys. I knew they would never like me back, that they’d make fun of me if they knew I liked them. It was better not to exist to them than to face that hurt - to seem mean and above love than to risk opening my mouth to speak.
What it all means? Sure, I eventually learned how to ride a bike. I finally broke up with that boy. I live in Colorado now. And these days, I dance everywhere - not only at parties. And I’m definitely not afraid of people anymore. (In fact, someone recently called me an extrovert and I was floored. But I guess I’ve made that transformation.)
And still, none of this excuses the lives I didn’t live. I was twelve and stuck at home while my friends rode in circles around and through the town. I was nineteen on New Year’s ‘99, eating pizza in a living room and holding hands with the wrong boy when I could’ve been out laughing with my friends, meeting new people. At twenty-three, I sat in a gray Manhattan office staring at the brick wall across the street, while my dreams were dancing through the Rockies. I spent hours of my adolescence scared and pasted against a wall as the music pounded all around me. For years, I let my insecurities rule out so many new friends, so many adventures.
This isn’t about regret. Regret is futile. I can’t change any of this. I can only take something from it all and move forward. And I take this:
The things of which I am most afraid are often the same things I most desire and the things that will make my life come alive. When my heart starts to pound inside of me, when I imagine my own anxieties as everyone else’s judgments, when I feel my voice beginning to fade away, I know I’m on to something good. It’s still difficult, but I’m learning to ignore that persistent clawing inside of me and just go for it.
