I used to be afraid of so many things growing up. I was scared of the dark and the dentist and ghosts and dying. Growing a little older I changed my fears up, I felt like it was time or maybe I just grew out of them. With age came new thoughts and new fears. Those fears were different, oh so different from the generic irrational childhood fears. They become more real, more pragmatic and more feasible, because as I grew taller, so did they.
I became afraid of not being good enough, of being a failure and failing in general. Afraid that no one could ever possibly love me, becoming afraid of feeling anything at all and seeming vulnerable in any way shape or form to anyone, ever. Before it had never even crossed my mind, that one could possibly be afraid of their own feelings, and ultimately themselves.
But as my childhood fears had once diminished, so did these fears. I can’t tell you exactly when it got better, but they started slowly but surely softening, their sharp teeth drooping and rounding. Growing smaller and smaller with each day, like the last abandoned March snowball, forgotten on the lawn to melt.
There’s a quote my mum always used to tell us growing up, “Nature does not tolerate empty space.” I don’t know if that’s a real G. B. Shaw quote or somebody else’s, or if my mum completely made it up. But this is the part where I’d put it, right here! Nature does not tolerate empty space, and so it goes. As soon as I’d grown bigger and stronger and smarter than my last fears, new ones would so kindly present themselves, crawling out of the shadows, acting up and being more stubborn than ever.
The thing I am now most afraid of and the thing that keeps me up at night is simply being ordinary. The word ordinary makes me want to scream. I don’t want to be ordinary, I don’t want to be usual, I don’t want to be boring. All these words exude negative energy for me. On top of that I know for a fact I don’t want ordinary things. I don’t want a husband or to have children, or have a house in the suburbs with a white picket fence or have any house with any fence for that matter. All these trivial things scream ordinary. And I, am everything but that. The white picket fence nonsense might sound like such a cliché, but I don’t really care, because I don’t want any of those things.
As a writer, everything I say, do or write will most likely be marked as cliché by somebody, at some point in time. But I’ll say it now and scream about it into the abyss later. Because I want extraordinary things and I want to be extraordinary. I want to be the definition of the word that’s on the furthest page in the dictionary from the word ordinary. And I would rather jump out of an aeroplane without a parachute at 30 000 ft than hear somebody use the word ordinary while describing me.
I want to do extraordinary things and meet extraordinary goals! I want to provoke you and spark your interest towards something completely unheard of. I want to make you feel and believe and be okay with feelings, the whole spectrum of feelings. And not only feeling them but also showing and expressing them and not being afraid. I want to set off fireworks inside people stomachs. Throw imaginary flowers into the air as I join the conversation. I want to generate so much heat with nothing but the passion inside of my voice, that it would bake cookies in seconds. I want to be peculiar, marvellous, outstanding, exceptional, bizarre, amazing and absolutely fantastic! Strange and wonderful, but never ordinary.
PS: I feel like I must note that I’m still very much afraid of the dentist but so is everyone, right?