Sometimes I am completely paralyzed by the idea of who I could be if I tried.

It’s easy to be me right now.  Just a server, just scraping by, just sort of living and sort of doing things that make me happy-ish.  I’m finding myself crippled by self doubt lately.

I need to put in my applications to college.  The thing is that means I will have to actually go to school, pick a major, pick some sort of career.  I don’t know what I want to be when I grow up and I’m scared if I pick the wrong thing I’m going to pigeonhole myself into something lackluster, something less than.

I’m scared to try and only get half way there.  Where ever the hell THERE is.

I love writing.  I love the stories I tell myself more than my actual life most of the time.  I love the idea of the life I could live.  It’s easier there, packed away in my head in this little box I can take out and dust off and parade around.  It’s just mine, my little fantasy land of make believe.  There’s no real work involved, no stress, no fear.

That’s what holds me back most of the time.

I am so scared.  All the time.  I’m scared that people won’t like me.  I’m scared that people will just let their eyes pass me by.  I’m scared of being vanilla and pastel.  I’m scared of being beige.

But the fucked up thing is? I’m totally living in beige.  I’m totally holding myself back and sabotaging myself so that I can dislike myself and feel sorry for myself and just shrug through my life saying:

Well, I could do it, if I wanted to.  I just don’t want to.  No really, I don’t.  I’m cool with where I am and what I’m doing.  I don’t need to be spectacular, because I’m just not and if I try to do something amazing and fail, then it just proves that I’m just this lump of girl who should have known her place.

How fucked up is that?  My brain HATES me.  I swear it does.

All it takes for me to change my life right now is to go online and put in my application.  That’s all!  Just a little bit of typing and I’m done.

I just don’t want them to say no.  I don’t want to be turned down and turned away because on paper I don’t look so amazing.

**

On paper I look like a thirty two year old with a 2.89 GPA and way too many jobs to list.  I look like someone who has just bounced around and failed at life.  I look like someone who doesn’t care.

Paper doesn’t show people how hard I’ve loved.  It doesn’t define me in more than black and white and social security numbers.  It doesn’t tell them the moments where my breath catches sticky like honey in my throat because something is so beautiful it breaks my heart.  It doesn’t show them how loud I can laugh when I’m filled with joy.  It only shows them the simple bits of me that I’ve accumulated between the moments I want to string and sew together to make a patchwork pastiche of brilliance and insanity.

It doesn’t let them see me question whether my arm was more important than my drinking.  I can’t express to them the time I held out my hand to a lover and felt them shake because they were with me.  I can’t make them see the world with the slippery colors of my frustration.  I can’t shake them and scream that there is more to me than can be shoved into a small essay.

I’m a fighter on the inside.  I try and I fail and I try and I fail, but I keep getting back up to try again.

The little black lines can’t hold all of me.  They can’t swell and separate and take shape so they can see me.  The just hold the spaces in between the life I’ve lived.

**

On paper I’m reject-able.  In person, I swallow worlds with my words.

On paper I’m beige.  In person, I’m scared.  It’s a life less lived.  I’m not just a typo.  I’m not just a number.  I’m that gathering of water under a faucet that’s just waiting for her maximum density.

I’m waiting to fall.

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