What if I really want something? What if I want to be something I’ve never been before, start over with some sort of delusion of grandeur? What if I want more than anything for you to read this, to share this confusion and validate this struggle?
What if someone knows I want it? What if someone finds out that what I really want to be, in this very moment, that what I really want to do is write. What if someone discovers that I think I have a voice worth sharing, and that I want to you hear what I think and feel and have to say?
What if they find out, and then I’m rejected? Again. I’m mocked, I’m placated with friendly smiles, and then when I walk away the talk begins. “Bless her heart, I hope she’s ready for disappointment.” “I enjoy talking to her sometimes, but writing is just a whole other thing.” “I know she thinks she can, but she just does not have a clue what it takes.” “Really, she’s just not good enough.”
What if they’re right?
What if “they” are really just me? What if those messages don’t come from anywhere except inside my head? What if I’m the only one who doesn’t think I’m good enough, that I don’t have what it takes?
What if I continue to reject myself, my ideas, and my dreams before anyone else has the opportunity to? What if I quit before I start just so I don’t have to know the pain of failure?
What if all the doubts are mine, not “theirs”? What if my actual friends and my family, the people who really love me, what if they love me more than I have ever loved myself? What if they don’t see my dreams through the filter of impossibility and inadequacy? What if they really believe the encouraging things they say: that I’m capable of so much, that people will want to hear and will respond to my voice, that I have a way of putting into words things they’ve felt and couldn’t articulate?
What if they actually believe in this? In me?
What if they’re right?
What if I had never in my life let “what if” stop me? What would have happened? What if I had never lost a second of my life giving an actual damn what anyone thought about my hopes and dreams, my likes and dislikes, my preferences, my thoughts and opinions… about me?
What if, even though I can’t get that time back, what if I never let “what if” stop me again?
What if I say, “To Hell with being scared of failure, of rejection, of inadequacy. I have this one life, this one shot, this one chance while I’m here, and I’m going all in.”? What if I show my kids what it means to shed the weight of expectation, of performance, of walking in the safety of “this will do?”
And what if I don’t?
