Growing Pains
There is this place between where you want to be and where you used to be that makes a person suffocate under the pressure of not being able to go back, but not being able to move forward either. Moving forward. That sounds so positive and refreshing. Too bad it’s usually hard and insanely scary.
It is so paradoxical that humans in general have this deep-seated aversion to change and growth, but change is the way of the universe. Change encompasses all. Steadfastness and constancy are abstract terms, in a sense. There is just no way of describing the primal fear inside of me that has held me back, keeping me stationary. Picture a string of yarn pulled to the point of fraying, but then pulled no longer, but also not let loose; a perpetual almost-breaking point. I feel myself irritated randomly. I want to inflict violence for the minutest reasons. And there is an ache that urges me towards the only resolution I can see as right. For once, I feel myself compelled to do what I should do; yet, I have always done what is comfortable, or satisfying, or safe. So this whole stepping out, jumping off, blindly flying is not coming easily. I am one of those people who anticipates something so much that the fear of it happening and the expectation of its disastrous consequences turn out to make the actual event seem like nothing in comparison. But this fear, this increasingly nauseating feeling of doom, also keeps me from experiencing. I will probably never sky dive. I will probably never jump off a 30 foot cliff into the water below.
If I had wings I would probably be too afraid to spread them and soar for fear of flying too high or diving too low. A constant assessment of potential future disaster runs through my mind with each new situation. It isn’t the flight down, but the jumping off, trusting my wings, that always makes me turn around and walk back to my warm place in the dirt. The ridiculous part is that I’m well aware that every time I trust my gut and do what makes me feel horribly vulnerable, something good always, undoubtedly and assuredly, results.
The only conclusion I can come to is that there is a masochistic element to my nature. A part of me that insists that pain is comfortable. Which means that somehow that part of me needs to heal before I will be able to take the leap.
