Fear

If I could tell my younger self only one thing, it would be this: Don’t be afraid. There are no ghosts in your closet or monsters under your bed. Do not be afraid of wild things. You are a wild thing. Roar like it. Have a wild rumpus or two.

When you are learning how to ride a bike, you will fall down, a lot. You will get injured almost every time you try to play a sport. It will hurt, but you will survive. Don’t let your fear of pain keep you from trying. You will spend your whole life regretting the chances you didn’t take.

When you get a little bit older, you will be afraid that no one will like you. You will constantly fear with others think about you. When you aren’t included in something, you will see it as your own failure, and you will cry about it. You will try to be more like the person they want you to be. You will buy clothes and accessories that don’t suit you. You will beg your parents to get you what all of your friends have. You will play so many roles trying to impress them.

You don’t need to impress them. You need to be kind and compassionate. You need to care about their feelings, but you don’t need to worry about what they think of you. You need to worry about what you think of you. Don’t be afraid of yourself. Don’t be afraid to be yourself. People will like that about you.

Don’t remain quiet about things that matter. When you know something is wrong, speak up. When you know the right answer, say so. Always raise your hand when you have something to contribute. Don’t doubt the sound of your own voice. It is more powerful than you can imagine.

Later you will become afraid of your own body. It will grow and transform in ways that disappoint you. At times you will hate it. You will try to hide it, and to change it, and to beat it down until it is something you find beautiful. You will never find it beautiful. You will spend years chasing an impossible ideal. You will always fear you have failed.

Don’t be afraid of all that your body is and all that it can do. You can run. You can jump. You can dance. You can climb trees and swing from monkey bars and hold people in your arms. Do all of these things. Do them proudly and gratefully and often. You only have one body. Don’t waste that gift by fearing it.

You will be afraid of boys – that they will ask you out and that they won’t ask you out. You will be afraid that they will love you and also that they won’t. They will seem different and complicated and scary. Your heart will get broken a few times. The pain will seem unbearable, but you will survive. Don’t fear this pain. Don’t let it stop you from taking risks with your heart. Don’t close yourself off to love.

You will waste a lot of time in your life fearing that you are unworthy. You will be afraid that you’re not good enough, that you don’t deserve all that you want and hope for. Don’t do this. Please. It is silly and foolish and it will keep you from reaching for a great many things that were well within your grasp. You will look back and see that. You will wish you had stretched yourself a little. You will wish you hadn’t been so afraid.

I am older now, and I am less afraid of what you, younger self, feared. But I have new fears. Grown-up fears. I am afraid of never becoming financially stable. I am afraid of becoming too comfortable with silence. I am not afraid of being alone, but I am afraid of becoming lonely. I am afraid there won’t be enough time to say all that I want to say before the words in my heart die inside. I’m afraid of becoming a “real writer” and also of not becoming one. I’m afraid of not living my life fully, they way I want to, the way my younger self hoped I would.

I am not afraid of death, but I am afraid of losing those I love to death. I am afraid of the absence death leaves behind. I am afraid that no matter how many times I say “I love you,” it won’t ever be enough. I’m afraid of reaching my own death to discover there is leftover love that wasn’t spent on who and what mattered most. I’m afraid of losing sight of who and what that is.

But mostly, I am afraid of my own fear. I am afraid of what it has already cost me. I am afraid of the regrets that continue to form. I am afraid I’ll spend my whole life writing letters to my younger self, urging her, begging her, please, don’t be afraid. Take some chances. Leap. Your very life depends on it.

Nostalgia

We were young and it was summer. There were always popsicles. There were always games to be played and adventures to be had. There were always old friends to be found and new friends to be made. We laughed a lot, and ran a lot, and stayed outside until it grew too dark to see. Someone was always calling us home. There was no time for grief.

I’m not sure if anyone, anywhere, ever stops missing that. The world never again feels quite as possible as the days we were young and in love with our lives. We never expected to lose so much. We never considered that we could be anything but happy.

It is nostalgia that calls to me on this unusually warm April day. All around me children are laughing in the streets and running through sprinklers and chasing down ice cream trucks. It feels like summer, which is no summer in particular, but the summer of childhood that never leaves us and can never be relived. We couldn’t have known it wouldn’t last forever. We wouldn’t have believed it, anyway.

As I’ve grown older, I’ve learned to see the end at the very beginning. I don’t know if this is true for everyone. I don’t know if it comes from being a child of divorce or a writer or a person with failed relationships or someone who has had to cope with the death of loved ones. It might be inevitable or it might be that experience has made me cynical, or at the very least skeptical. I suspect it’s a little of both, and I suspect I’m not alone in it.

I want to believe in happy endings. I want to be the kind of person who believes in happy endings. But I’ve learned to prepare for that not to happen, and in trying to toughen myself to the world, I’ve lost a certain softness.

What I miss most about my childhood is not the feeling of happiness or safety or comfort. It is not the way days always felt long and full and important. It is not the friendships or the adventures or the sound of mother’s voice calling us home for dinner. It is the certainty I felt that my life would always be that way – so simple, so nourishing, so pure.

I never thought about it that way, of course. To do so would have meant the recognition of alternatives, and for happy children, those don’t exist. There is only here and now. There are only friends and games and popsicles. There is only giggling. There are no foolish questions like “What if? and “What next?” “And then what?” There is only endless summer.

I miss being able to live in the present, as only children, and perhaps other enlightened beings, ever really can. I miss not having plans, and not needing plans, and not planning to make plans when things feel helpless. I miss not feeling helpless. I miss feeling invincible. I miss the softness of summer days.

It is a difficult balance, to be an intelligent being and to live life outside of your head. I haven’t yet learned to stop writing the next chapter before the current one is complete. I haven’t yet learned to stop asking “What if?” and “What next?” “And then what?” I haven’t yet been wise enough in adulthood to think like a child.

One day I will be old, if I’m lucky, and there will be no more need for planning. I look forward to this. I am nostalgic for it, though it has happened yet.

It is the one ending I like to imagine, the ending that doesn’t keep me from beginning, the ending I want to believe will be happy. There will be no more time for questions or grief. There will only be long, important days. There will only be thoughts of laughter and friendships and adventures. There will only be endless summers within me.

There will be nothing left to do but continue to play until it grows too dark to see. And then the time will come when I will hear it, echoing over decades, over the course of an entire life – the sound of someone calling me home.

Over The Rainbow

It was spring. The trees blossomed. The flowers bloomed. The bright sun beckoned to us. “Come out. Feel my warmth. Enjoy this day.” And so we did. My mother took us to the arboretum and we spent the entire afternoon among the trees and flowers, delighting in their sweetness. I was young.

Still, I remember the impulse. I remember feeling so surrounded and consumed with the beauty of the world. I remember that first recognition of happiness, in its purest form. I remember wanting to mark the occasion.

And so I ran. I ran hard and I ran fast. I ran in a way that was exclusive to my childhood – not for exercise, not as stress relief, not away from something – but in a pure, primal way that required no thought or motivation. I remember that feeling well, that freedom, that urge to move my little legs just because I could, just because it felt good, just because I was young and it was spring.

I reached the top of a hill and stood there looking down at my mother and the rest of the world. I looked up at the sky. I thought I could almost touch it.

And because I hadn’t yet learned to write, I sang. I sang strong and I sang loud. I sang in a way that was exclusive to my childhood – before I had learned to become self-conscious of such things. I sang because it felt good, because I was young, and it was spring.

And so my little lungs filled with air, and my little mouth formed the words, and I serenaded my mother, and the rest of the world, with Somewhere Over The Rainbow. It was the perfect song for that perfect moment, and I remember knowing that even as a child. I remember the way I sang and felt everything else fade away. I remember believing that there was such a place, a land that I heard of once in a lullaby, where dreams that I dared to dream really do come true. I remember thinking, maybe this was it.

Somewhere over the rainbow, all days would be this perfect. Somewhere over the rainbow, I could stay like this forever. Somewhere over the rainbow, trees would always blossom and flowers would always bloom. I would always be young and in love with the world. It would always be spring.

And the thing is, after all of this time spent learning the painful lessons of what it means to be alive, after all of these years chasing down courage and a heart and a brain, after discovering over and over again that they were with me all along, I still find myself thinking, maybe this is it.

Maybe the happy little birds chirping outside my window right now have already flown over the rainbow. Maybe that I woke up with the clouds far behind me, the breathtakingly blue sky of this day welcoming me into it, means that I have already arrived. Maybe this is where troubles melt like lemon drops. Maybe I could stay like this, forever.

Maybe I will always delight in such sweetness. I will always blossom and bloom. I will always be that little girl, running and singing and almost touching the sky. Because it feels good, and I am young, and it is spring. Because if birds can do it, why then, oh why, can’t I?

 

The F-Word

Growing up, I feared this word more than any other. I could never say it out loud. I could never hear it without cringing, and turning red, and feeling a deep and particular shame. “Fat” was the worst word I could think of, far more offensive than the other f-word, far more powerful and hurtful and scary.

That single world was the reason I spent most of my young life avoiding bullies and confrontation. It was built-in ammunition for anyone who hoped to destroy me. It made me an easy target, and so I spent most of my time trying to hide behind intentionally ridiculous outfits and good manners and kindness. I don’t regret any of that, but I regret my logic behind it. I regret that it was a means of hiding rather than a way of embracing who I was. I regret that I felt so ashamed.

Because the truth is, no one ever called me fat except for me. The truth is, I wasn’t fat, not really, not the way I thought I was. I look back at pictures from those days and wonder why I was so insecure. Maybe it’s that I was surrounded by gorgeous – and I mean GORGEOUS – friends. Maybe it’s that I couldn’t help but to compare myself to them, and to realize each time that I did not, in fact, compare. Maybe I was just a teenage girl and that’s what girls do.

But why do we do that? I work with mostly women – smart, strong, interesting, clever, remarkable women. And yet, the majority of our conversations revolve around the f-words, food and fat. Really, why do we do that?

There are answers, of course – society and media and cultural influences. But why are we, as smart, strong, independent women not above all of that? Why must we spend so much time obsessing about what we eat and how we look? Why do we spend so much time punishing ourselves this way?

There is so much discussion about “deserving” when it comes to food. “I deserve this piece of cake because I exercised today.” I understand the logic, and you do deserve that cake, but the flip side of that is the assumption that if you haven’t “earned” the right to put excess calories into your body, you somehow DESERVE to feel badly about yourself, to feel guilt and shame and disgust should you decide to eat it.

And that’s where we get into trouble. We make these strict rules for ourselves in terms of our eating habits about what is “good” and what is “bad.” And so the lesson becomes that if we’re eating virtuously (meaning healthily), we are “good,” and if we are eating poorly (meaning unhealthily) we are “bad.” But we’re smarter than that, aren’t we? We’re smart enough to know that one silly little piece of cake doesn’t define our self-worth. We need to give ourselves a break.

Of course, it’s important to take care of our bodies. I’m not suggesting that everyone just give up on weight loss goals and exercise and healthy eating habits. Obesity is a prevalent and significant problem, one that stems from, and results in, even greater amounts of self-loathing. This country is filled with self-hatred, and so much of it revolves around the fear of this one word. The F-word. Fat.

Why do we give that word so much power? Ultimately, it’s just a word. It’s really no different from any other adjective. People replace it with words like “chubby” or “heavy” or “big” because the word “fat” has become this terrible, terrifying thing. We’ve turned it into a weapon against each other and ourselves. The word “fat” destroys us.

I once heard a dear friend of mine say the words “I’m so fat” and it nearly destroyed me. Not only because she is beautiful, and really very skinny, but because she couldn’t see it. She couldn’t see what I was seeing when I looked at her. She couldn’t see anything beyond that one single, untrue word.

And even if it had been true, even if like me and others I know, she was overweight, it shouldn’t have been the way she defined herself. It shouldn’t have been the only thing she could see when she looked in the mirror. It shouldn’t have been powerful enough to bring her so much pain.

Words matter. They can create and they can destroy. They can remain with us longer than we, or anyone, can imagine. But we can determine their significance. We can choose how much attention to give to them. We can choose which to hold on to and which to let go of. We can choose to stop giving the word “fat” so much power. We can give ourselves a break. We deserve it, don’t we? We deserve to stop hiding and being afraid and punishing ourselves. We deserve our own love.

As for the F-word? Well, fuck it.