Be Fearless

I'm really glad that today is so rainy.  I'm a little stormy inside today, and it feels like Mother Nature is with me on this one.  We both know that the storms are what help the roots to spread and the plants to grow.

I'm not sad.  It's more pensive gloom than tears.  It's the realization that I still have a lot of self-shaping to do, that my true self still isn't strong enough to be completely free.  I also realize that growth is going to require more storms and maybe even big, grumbling earthquakes that force the scared little Me underneath all of this skin to crawl out to the surface and grow up, grow out.

Today started with a dream.  The scene was different, but the events and people were the same.  I was dreaming about a dream I've had for years now.  I woke up knowing that I wasn't ready for the dream to be reality.  It's not news to me that I'm not ready.  Since I started high school, I've been trying to grow into a body that is ready for that dream.  At times, it's all I can remember.  All of these struggles to become something are, at times, as far as my memory stretches.  I woke up to dreary rain.

Today really started at midnight, when I was on the phone with my mother.  She was very sympathetic, listening to me complain about my troubles as she always does.  I dominate our conversations, although I try not to.  Little Me gets lonely, though, and Mum is the only one that Little Me can talk to.  Mum knows everything about me, has watched me and known me since the day I was born.  She knows the things that I like to hide and the things that I don't even know about myself.  Little Me tells her many things, would probably tell Mum every thought if it were possible.

At midnight is when Mum told me the truth.  I'll always be grateful that I've been blessed with a mother who tells me the truth.  She's the one that showed Little Me how unprepared Little Me really is.  Little Me wants desperately to be Real Me, but is just too darn scared and small.  Little Me would never make it in the outside world.  For some reason, Little Me always holds back.

Mum told me honestly that all of my troubles are my own.  I am as much the cause of them as I can be the solution.  I'm the reason that I'm pulling away from my friends, not some stupid disorder.  I'm the reason that Wrestling makes me sick to my stomach, and I'm the reason why I can't look certain people in the eye.  Little Me is scared of everything, and Little Me never works hard enough to get past that.  Little Me tries to never break a sweat.

Well, honey, it's time to grow up.  Real Me is trying to be an adult, and you can't be a part of that unless you grow up.  Growing up means thunderstorms and earthquakes.  It means pushing yourself and doing everything that makes you uncomfortable and brings tears to your eyes.  It means letting your friends help you to do that.  It means being fearless.

Be fearless.  That's my new motto.  Be fearless.  Do all of the things that you've never wanted to.  Be a wrestler.  Longboard down the big hill.  Look that guy in the eyes, say hello.  Do them and soon you'll find that they've secretly been the things you've always wanted to do, but you've hidden that desire beneath pounds of skin and elephant-tons of fear.  I already know.  I've already started.

Scrape by scrape, I'm peeling off the paint.  Right now it's rainy outside, and I'm a little sad.  Little Me thought that growing up would be easy.  I thought I'd be ready for the dream by now.  I'm not.  In fact, I won't be for a long time. I recognize that now.  That makes me sad, too.  The dream might have run away by the time I'm ready.

But the wonderful thing is that, even though I might not always have this particular dream, even though right now it's all that I can see, I will always have something.  If it happens that the dream runs away, another one will come and take its place.  I'm a dreamer, and dreamers always have dreams.  Maybe by the time that Little Me grows up and becomes Real Me, I won't need the old dream anymore.  Maybe this dream is meant to be nothing more than a dream, something to wake up to and remember that there's still work for me to do.  Maybe not.

Either way, I'm peeling off my paint, layer by layer, scrape by scrape.  There's rain outside, a little like England.  A little like those mountains up in Scotland, where I felt my heart pulling me out of the coach, burying me in the ground.  A little like those green Irish hills, which lifted me up, gave me flowers.  A little like Washington, where a tiny, blond, pale baby was born to a mother that would always tell her the truth.  A little like all of the places that I've been.  A little like here, where I am; a little like Virginia.   A little like Little Me, who's trying to sprout.