Okay, I don't know about you, but I often get this feeling. It's usually when something really cool is about to happen, and I'm excited for it, but then my anxiety chimes in and says "but what if it sucks though? What if the world ends because you decided to do this probably great but also maybe catastrophic thing? We should just not do it. Wouldn't want to risk it."
I felt it before OVERDUE. It almost choked me, this feeling. This fear of not being good enough almost kept me from even trying. I felt it when I first started dating Eli. Not many people know this, but I almost broke up with him like the first week we were dating. I sort of tried to. I got really sad and was like "what if I’m mean to you?! I won't be good enough. Let's just not." And he was like, “Well no, you already are good enough and I don't even care if you're nice to me because I like you too much." (These are not his exact words. I don’t remember what he said. But this is the general idea.) And here we are. I am sometimes mean to him, I am sometimes not good enough to him. But we learn, and it's a wonderful, happy learning curve, so I’m grateful I didn't give up before it started.
I have that feeling again, now. Friday night I moved into my first apartment. This marks the first time I've ever left home. I'm a part time student, a full time employee, and I'm teaching a class as well. And now I've just moved out. (Or in, depending on your perspective.) At times, this all feels like too much. In fact, I'm almost positive this is all too much. But I'm doing it. And I'm trying to choke, gag, fight and silence that asshole in my head telling me to give up already.
On Wednesday, I taught the first in a four week children's film class at a local library. It was a little overwhelming, as anything involving ten year olds is, but as I listened to twelve ten year olds all try to tell me their thoughts at once, and one particular ten year old tell me, "I have too much up here to explain it all" and see him fluff his hair like a mad professor, I realized. These kids, this behavior this kid described, this is what the inside of my brain sometimes looks like. Sixteen screaming ten year olds all shrieking to be heard first, so you literally cannot focus on anyone or anything.
My brain looks like this today, because Eli (and Kelsey's boyfriend Sam) just left this morning for a weeklong trip to Colombia. The freaking country. COLOMBIA. It's an incredible opportunity for them both, and for Peaks Coffee Company, and I would never want Eli not to have gone, but at the same time, it's freaking hard. It's hard because he's going to be however many miles away, in a place with limited wifi, for seven days straight. And I think I would be okay with that, if this wasn't also my first week living in my new place. In a completely new situation. I have to form new routines, patterns, etc, while balancing the old ones, all on my own. I tell him everything. Every stupid little problem that arises in my day, in my life, he helps me with. Even if he has no advice, he helps me with it all just by virtue of my being able to tell him about it. And I know I have other people. And I'll be okay. But it definitely, uh, sucks.
Earlier last week, as I was nearly drowning in how overwhelmed I was, I stumbled upon this quote by Brene Brown, someone who I've been told to familiarize myself with a million times, and haven't until now. She said, "You get [courage] by courageous acts. It's like you learn to swim by swimming. You learn courage by couraging." I'm really hoping she's right. So I'm going to be courageous this week, and much like Harry Potter, hope the sorting hat was right when it put me into Gryffindor.
-Fran
