Finite

Anxiety stems from my finiteness, such definition, such absoluteness. I know that one day I will die. What I don’t know is how or when or why. What kills me even more is that those I love will be no more, torn away before I’m ready, so forlorn. Am I alone in this fear, these tears? Or do we all hold this inside, the bitter idea that we will die? Maybe it’s a natural human tendency; maybe we’re transcended endlessly, never capable of meeting expectations set by an infinite God; maybe we’ve been outdone by the one we laud. Or maybe we’re still holding our belief at arm’s length. If we believe when convenient, then I think we’re all in agreement, this way of life is not deviant. We place standards on ourselves to overcome, but we’re out to overcome the one we can’t even run from.

Challenge

I can see myself doing so many things. Becoming an editor. Getting published. Becoming a college professor, even. But it’s really not me that I see doing those things. It’s some future version of myself, some far off future me who eventually gets to do everything she wants to do and who has the courage and confidence to do them without question. But the truth of the matter is, that person doesn’t exist. Sure, people change. But all that bullshit about being different people throughout our lives, I don’t believe that. Yes, I am different than who I was five years ago. But I’m not so fundamentally different that I’m a different person entirely. I may not have quite as many quirky attributes, and I don’t post as many selfies or stupid posts on social media as I used to, but deep down, I’m the same girl who nearly had a panic attack every first class in college all the way up until her senior year. I have the same fears, the same insecurities, the same anxieties, and to be honest, some of them have only gotten worse with time. Maybe I wasn’t nervous about first classes anymore by the time I got to my senior year, but look how many classes it took me to get to that point. The characteristic behind that scenario is my fear of new situations, and that fear is still alive and kicking. I don’t see me doing the things I want because I lack the courage to do them. All I can see the present me doing is working at a dead end job that takes the happiness out of my life, detracts enormously from my social and family life by forcing me to work evenings, and adds stress to the most important relationship in my life, the relationship with my fiancée, because I feel like I’m never around and never have time to even plan our wedding. That’s the only place I can see myself as I am now. So instead, I picture myself fulfilling my dreams somewhere down the road in the future when I have the courage to fulfill them. But in reality, I will never have the courage. I will never have the courage to walk into my first real job interview with the confidence that I can get that job no problem. I will never have the courage to spend my first day at my first editing job self-assured that I made the right choice, that my new employer made the right choice, and that I can absolutely do the job I have just begun. I will never have the courage to walk into a classroom of college students, of any students, for the first time and know that I am in the right place and that I can get through the day, let alone the semester or school year, without screwing things up. That’s not who I am. That’s not who I ever will be as far as I know. I still have my anxiety, and I still am wary of new situations; in fact, I’m terrified of them. Which is why I have to just do it anyway. I have to apply to that job. I have to go to that interview. I have to suffer through my first day or week or month of that  job, whatever it takes for me to become comfortable. I have to get the education I need to be that professor, if that’s what I decide I want. And I have to walk into that classroom despite the part of me that wants to run away screaming in terror merely at the thought of having to talk to more than one person at a time. I can’t wait around for me to become someone who can do what I want to do with my life, because I will never be that person in the future if I’m not her right now. I may not have the ability to not be nervous or scared of change, but that doesn’t mean I don’t have the ability to pursue my goals. It just makes it more of a challenge along the way.