There is something wonderful about a new year. A vast horizon of some three hundred and sixty odd days of emptiness waiting to be filled. Pages and pages of days anticipating the arrival of stories. Stories of summer nights and life changing experiences. The sweet blankness of the unfamiliar. So many new chapters of a book yet to be written. Each of us with our own blank book and our own empty pages.
Somewhere, in the dark corners of my mind, I imagine that I am able to shed all the unwanted parts of myself and leave them, tattered and rejected in the past of the old year. That I can begin the new year as a new person. Glowing and unafraid with just a beautiful sunny horizon beckoning me to step forward and take the deep unhindered breaths of a fresh new start.
But it is not so…
All those tattered and intolerable parts of me step into the new year along side me. Shadows. The darker parts of my character dragging themselves along for the ride despite my deep desire to leave them, crushed and discarded on the forgotten side of midnight. Is it that I did not work hard enough on myself? Did I not fill the last 365 pages with stories of being good enough? Did I not try hard enough to peel away the layers so that a new me, a me without the shadows, can start writing those magnificent stories.
I thought that perhaps I could step into 2017 unafraid. I thought that my work there was done.
But it is not so…
In the first few silent hours of this brand new year I read this quote ‘ There is great value in being fearless. For too much of my life I was too afraid. Too frightened by it all. That fear is one my biggest regrets’.
I sat sullen in the guest room of my friends house and decided that if I am ever to cast off this murky war I have with myself I need to understand it. I need to break it down into little pieces. Manageable bites. I need to wrestle with the individual parts of it for as a whole it is too strong for me. Otherwise it will win. It will always win.
So I take out my brand new journal. The one with the delightful, creamy, empty pages waiting for my pen to fill them with exquisite tales of bravery and success. I think of this thing….this fear. Of how it bears itself to me. For I am not afraid of real things. Snakes or spiders are not my demon. I do not fear death or deadly disease. I do not fear open spaces nor being alone. Being alone is my friend. No my fears are not so simple.
And so I write on those new velvety pages…
I fear I will disappoint myself. I fear that I am not as strong or as brave as I think. That I am not really the sum of all the intelligent parts and that the result will be breathtakingly short of all the infinite possibilities.
….. and so I fear that I am, after all, not enough, even for myself.
I fear my lack of courage.
I fear that trust is too big a mountain for me to climb and…
and I fear that this broken heart will never mend.
nikivanvelden 