when it's over...

I'm so scared. It's nice to be able to confess this so openly, so plainly.

I'm pants-crapping, hair-tugging, finger-nail biting scared. There are nights I can't sleep, and I'm sure, in some twisted self-destructive plot, the migraines I get so much more frequently now-a-days are somehow my body's way of kicking me in the pants while I'm down. I was just kidding about the sleeping thing. I sleep like a log. It just sounded better to start that sentence that way.

Writers. Sheesh.

I'm scared I won't finish. I'm scared that this novel will never be done. I'm scared that if it does get done, that it will be terrible. I'm scared to finish it because not finishing means that I don't have to get graded on it, that I don't have to try to get it published just yet. I'm scared of those things because I think I will fail at them.

I'm scared of failing college. I'm scared that this stupid thesis is going to overshadow and ultimately undo all of the work I've put into these last four years. I'm scared that this will keep me from getting into a good grad school. I should have applied this year, before this thesis mattered. I should have sucked it the fuck up first semester and just taken those stupid, stupid GRE's. Now I may never take them. Now I may never achieve my full potential.

I'm scared that I've put on twenty pounds, and I won't be able to lose it. It's only twenty pounds, as much as, I don't know, two bags of groceries, but I don't want that hanging off of my thighs and my belly. I want to weigh what I weighed at the end of high school. I want to be thin and pretty. I want to FEEL thin and pretty, again.

I'm scared that I won't find a job. Everyone is slowly getting offers. I applied to fourteen jobs last week and only one of them called me, to tell me that they're not hiring entry level. Those are scary fucking odds. I don't know what to do.

I'm scared because my parents don't have secure jobs. In any way. By the summer, they won't have jobs at all. I need to find a job so that I can pay the mortgage. That's the thought that keeps freaking me the fuck out. It's never been said, but it's a sort of self-imposed, utilitarian kind of task. Maybe it will get me going. More likely, it will give me a migraine.

I'm scared because I'm not ready to leave school. I'm scared because I don't know what the eff I want to do with my life. I'm scared because I'm not excelling, and I wish I were. I'm scared, because around this time, high school was so easy, and why is college so hard? I'm scared because there's not enough time. I'm scared because I have writer's block. I'm scared because I feel like the walls are closing in.

I feel like I write one of these posts somewhere, in some secret, varied corner of cyberspace every 3 years or so.

I need to take my own advice. I need to do what I made Jack do:

"He needed to calm down, to get over this ridiculous fear. It wasn’t that he was afraid of her, really. It just made his insides squirm to think of someone he had known as so alive as nothing more than a body in a case.
He glanced around the room again from his spot by the door, forcing his eyes to take in what he didn’t want to see. There it was: her casket. It was now or never. He needed to stop being afraid. Delilah wouldn’t have wanted that. Besides, he missed talking to her. Maybe he could come here, sometimes, just to talk, if he stopped being so scared.
He took a step farther into the tomb, then another step, then another. It was almost easy, and then he was close enough to the casket to reach out, and touch it. He took a final step forward and almost let out a cry.
Instead of a wooden casket top was Delilah’s beautiful face: ruby lips, snow white skin, dewy cheeks, all lying there as though asleep. It felt a little like being kicked in the stomach. He had forgotten that her casket was made of crystal. Mr. DeLocke had insisted on it so that he could see her when he visited; he had been unafraid of decomposition, of what Delilah might look like months and years later, once her body began to break down.
It was strange, so strange, that now, when Jack looked at her, she was still pristine, and so beautiful, even more vibrant than she had been in life. Delilah had been dead for fifteen years, and yet here she was, whole, not a single dark hair shifted since her most untimely death. On the contrary, her color looked more vivid—the roses in her cheeks were rich and scarlet, and her long, dark hair glistened almost blue and purple in places. Her thick, dark lashes curled serenely over her eyes. She was more peaceful, more—somehow—alive. Here, in the casket, she looked reborn, like a withered bulb planted in the ground to rebloom."

Conquering fear causes great rewards. I hope. I will try not to be afraid.