the tingle of fear

I find it interesting that lately I don't really go out of my way to investigate what I'm afraid of, or to really write about it often.  I don't try getting to the heart of why watching political events unfold sometimes makes me burst into tears or why my hands sometimes start shaking while I try to do things to prepare for my new job.  I don't really look into why I'm reaching out to so many people in a superficial way, trying to re-establish connections that in the past I just let slide.  

I don't write about how scared I am that no one has the answers for the country and that really, no one knows who would be able to deal better with the circumstances that have yet to fall into place over the next four years.  However, I do know some things that I cannot stand for and watching those exact principles supported so strongly by both friends and complete strangers makes me ache inside.  

I don't write that I'm actually scared that my little "crash course in social skills" is going to prove over my head.  I'd rather not give any purchase to the idea that I am innately socially inept.  

Even more so, I don't want to admit that I'm scared that I will lose all tenuous connections to the people in my life over the next year.  I don't want to say that sometimes I worry that I will lose people to significant others, to other friends who are more relatable and exciting, or to a eventual boredom with me and lack of connection due to my absence.  I don't want to admit that I am still scared that I cannot live up to expectations.

So I just try not to look into it.  I might put on fancy pants and heels and look in the mirror and see the eight-year-old girl with scraggly hair that never figured out how to grow up, but I blink over and over until I see the twenty-four year old version standing there, less awkwardly.  I pull out my grown-up phone and try to find a way to assure myself that I do know what I'm doing.  I write lists of books I will try to read, and make pizzas to "better myself" and don't post about being scared.  Because really, all fear takes its power from my admission of it and my acquiescence to it.  If I stand up and laugh at it I can move forward.  If I wallow in it, I am consumed by it.

But it is such a comforting blanket... or at least it disguises itself that way.