Running over the same old ground, what have we found? Same old fears…
– Pink Floyd, Wish You Were Here
I really don’t understand myself most of the time, if I’m being honest. I see so many people who look so sure of themselves, so ready to take life by the horns, people who look to me as if they have it all planned out. Sometimes I feel that way, and sometimes I don’t. One minute I know exactly what I want to become, and a sense of destiny overwhelms me; the next, I can’t decide if I should put in the cheerios or the milk first.
I wonder, who am I really? Am I the person that I present to everyone else, or the other girl that’s hiding inside? Or am I a mixture of both? People tell me they see me as a positive and bubbly person, without a care in the world. Someone without problems, forever optimistic.
Then there’s what I see: a scared, frightened child.
Smiling, because I’m afraid of feeling anything other than happiness. I’m afraid of letting on how insecure I can be, because I know how insecurity can be used against me. I hold onto my positivity, desperately clinging to it. Sometimes, its the only thing that grounds me to this earth. Sometimes, its the only thing that can get me through the day.
My greatest fear: forgetting, losing myself.
There are brief seconds in the day, just small moments, where I cease to exist. I become another speck of dust in the cosmic universe, another grain in the sands of time. It’s a truly dreadful feeling. My mind begins to flail about, clawing the insides of my soul, hoping to find something there, something to pull me back to reality.
And suddenly, I am back.
I remember who I am. I am that positive girl you see, smiling and being happy; I am also the frightened child within, the one who is afraid of so many things, whose insecurities seem to grow by the day but refuses to let anyone use them against her. Can I be both?
I still think that I haven’t completely found myself, and I for some reason continue to fluctuate between a solid sense of self and a void, transient state.
How do I break out of this cycle? How does anyone?
Maybe we aren’t meant to break out of the cycle. Maybe we’re supposed to keep rediscovering those old fears, only to learn something new from them. The thoughts, fears we had as five-year-olds might manifest themselves in bigger ways when we’re thirty, forty, even fifty. The battle will be endless, but that’s how we’ll continue to grow. We might even discover new fears, but the old ones will always be there to remind us that we are forever capable of fighting our inner demons.
Even as we grow older, we’ll always have those same old fears. The same old fears, to remind us of the people we’ll always be, to tie us back to where we began, and to where we’ll eventually end.
Maybe I won’t ever find myself. And that’s all right.
After all, isn’t that the beauty of being human?
– Pihu J.