Frozen

Published October 24th, 2009

LE If you’re not failing some of the time, you’re playing it too safe.

Cephyn @LE my problem is failing almost of the time, since i play way, way too safe and never try at all. i break axioms.

JM @LE @cephyn hmm I have never been good at playing it safe. It bores the crap out of me.

LE Agreed. I’d rather be called reckless than boring. RT @JM @cephyn I have never been good at playing it safe. It bores the crap out of me

cephyn @LE @JM I admire and envy you both. cheers.

 

We were all standing up on a mountain…high up on a wall, staring down and across a deep valley. Thousands of vertical feet of open air lay before us and we could see as far as anyone could see. The distance was line after line of increasingly higher mountain peaks, the last being the Great Western Divide. Many of the highest peaks in the Lower 48 formed our horizon. Sitting up there, looking at the splendor of the world.

What do you do, when staring into a natural chasm? What does anyone do – what have humans done, as long as anyone can remember, when standing on a mountain peak above a valley? They yell. They wait. They listen. Then they hear themselves yelling back, echoing from thousands of feet away. Granite walls all around us, perfect echoing surfaces. So my friends whooped and hollered. They laughed and smiled in wonderment. When else will you have the opportunity to hear an echo from miles away? It is not an opportunity to be missed, right?

And yet, I stood silent. Like I so often do. Why? It made me uncomfortable. Nervous. Anxious. What if someone heard us? We’re in a National Park, that nature is here for us all to enjoy – what if we disturb someone else’s appreciation of nature? What if we ruin someone else’s trip because, in the middle of their solitary nature hike – they hear us yelling down from on high? What if, what if, what if, what if. What if. That’s all that I could think of. So I said nothing. I did nothing. I missed that opportunity.

And that was an opportunity I recognized. Usually I don’t recognize them until long after the critical moment has passed. And many, I’m positive, I never recognize at all. But I can’t prove that.

My friends did the right thing. They indulged. A minute or two of yelling into the ether from the top of the known world wasn’t going to hurt anyone. But it froze me. I freeze all the time, for fear of offending anyone with my actions. I’m worried about ruining their moment. Any moment. Even if I don’t know them – actually, especially if I don’t know them – I don’t want to be annoying or offensive. That fear, of ruining someone else’s day, of making them uncomfortable, paralyzes me.

It’s also an abject fear of being the center of attention. I want badly to blend in and melt away, almost all the time. Subconsciously, at least. I consciously wish I was a much more forceful, magnetic, comfortable and public personality. I admire those personalities. But I am betrayed by my own self-consciousness. To take a risk is to invite notice, to invite scrutiny. That is a scary prospect for me, it is another risk in itself.

But of course, that’s not all it is. I don’t take many risks in any other way either. I guess I’m just a fearful person, sadly. Most people who know me know I’m very reserved. And normally I’m ok with that. It’s who I am. But often – and increasingly so – I’m frustrated by the fact that I don’t choose to be this way, I simply am this way. Because of fear. Because something internal to me is always screaming not to take risks. I’m not sure why – it’s not fear of failure, because by not taking risks I know I fail a million times more frequently than if I did go out on a limb. But I can’t seem to very easily get over that fear.

Trying to fills me with great anxiety and that horrible sinking feeling. Every subconscious part of me fights me whenever I step out of my comfort zones. Strongly. I feel sick. I feel sleepy. I don’t know what to say. I don’t know what to do, where to stand, how to sit, how to BE. I freeze. I panic. I have to leave.

But I do try, in frustratingly and excruciatingly small steps. One at a time. Often, past the moment, whether I actually did anything or not, I’m sweating bullets. I’m overloaded. I feel the need to hide. Just considering certain things puts me in a cold sweat. But I do try. I will continue to try. But it’s slow, and difficult, and hard to identify spontaneously when I’m backing away from something I shouldn’t. And hard to even know how to push myself, because I just don’t possess the tools.

I don’t take risks. I am afraid of risks. But I’m getting nowhere without them. I’m trying. I’m hoping it comes easier someday. Because right now – it’s one of the hardest things I do and when I fail at it (and I do, a lot) I disappoint myself beyond measure.

I do envy those that don’t play it safe. But I don’t know if they realize just how debilitating and terrifying it is for me. I wish I knew a better way to myself, a better way to just BE. I hope to figure it out someday…but for my sake, I hope it’s someday soon.

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