I Choose to Be Scared

I would like to preface this by saying that I don't know exactly how most other people approach life. I can say that I think I know how they seem to from my highly subjective, limited, and incomplete vantage point. It often seems to me that people tend to operate entirely from within their comfort zone when they are acting of their own volition. It is only when they are pressured by either obligation or a strong desire to experience something positive that they cannot otherwise obtain that they will do something which is intimidating for them.

My conclusions about this may be way off base, but it really does seem that most people stay within bounds most of the time. There are, of course, some people who adventurous, gregarious, and quite bold who can bound off into the world blithely sampling new and bizarre food, jumping into conversations with strangers, and putting their bodies into harmful and embarrassing situations. Those people seem to navigate the world with ease and to not care about the outcomes as long as they are embracing novelty. I used to envy those people. I'd like to say that now I am one of them, but that would be far from the truth.

The truth is that I have been pushing myself for many years to do things which are quite a bit out of the way of my comfort zone. Right now - this thing I'm doing here - writing from behind some generic anonymous name? That is my most comfortable spot. I've spent more years here than people can imagine. In fact, this behavior pre-dates the internet and goes back to my days as a voracious pen paller who wrote more than 20 correspondents at time from the security of her childhood bedroom. Those people knew my name and address, but they were too far away to see me or come to where I lived. In those days, even when you were "known", you were essentially anonymous. I've been doing this since I was 12 years old.

I've spent my life ducking in and out of my comfort zone. I'd push myself out there and pull back in and hide depending on how I was feeling about my body and my life. Having grown up super fat in an era when people weren't fat (yes, I know, it's hard to believe there was a time when there was only one fat kid in the each class, but there was and she was me), I often had to hide because of the humiliation of being out where I could be seen, bullied, ridiculed, and judged. My courage depended on who I was with, whether I was in a loss or gain cycle in my weight, and what I was doing.

For the last 5 or so years, I've been in an extreme cycle of putting myself out there and doing things that are scary, potentially embarrassing, and stressful. Given my lack of physical grace, anything quasi-athletic that I do in public makes me think twice, but I've been swimming (a truly terrifying initial experience and still one that makes me self-conscious every time I do it), played ping pong, and thrown a frisbee in the park with my husband. I've also tried to jog with him a few times, but my weak and degraded joints have made that something I could not do.

For people who have not grown up or spent a large chunk of their lives being subjected to humiliation due to the appearance (and sub-par performance) of their bodies, these may sound like trivial exercises. However, I grew up being sneered at, laughed at, and degraded in every loathsome P.E. class I was forced to take. The idea of physical activity under the watchful eyes of other people is more than a little scary for me, but I do it anyway. I face my fear until I stop being scared. Sometimes, it takes a short time. Sometimes, it takes a long time.

Even in situations in which I am quite adept, there is often the specter of rejection, failure, and being ostracized. This is particularly so in cases in which I am a newcomer or an outlier - a condition that I have been living in nearly full-time since returning to the U.S. after 23 years in Japan and moving to a place where I know virtually no one. Everyone is new. Every situation is new. In most cases, they know each other and I don't know them or, at least, they have something in common that I don't share with them. Sometimes, I have a great deal in common with them, but they refuse to acknowledge it, so it always seems to be hard to manage.

Recently, I finally pursued an avenue for meeting new people that I had been talking about doing (to my husband) for quite some time. Our local library has an "ESL Club" which meets every Wednesday morning for 90 minutes. Given my previous experience teaching English for 23 years, it would seem to be an ideal and easy outlet for meeting new people. While it is certainly the case that I am adept at managing to talk to English students, it is still a little scary walking into a room filled with people who have known each other for months and have a way of working and managing which is familiar to them, but not known to me.

I've gone to these gatherings three times, and each time, I have to will myself to go back again. I don't have to do it. I'm not even sure that the experience has been particularly gratifying to me, though it has been interesting (I will write more specifically about these experiences later). I still feel like an outlier and am still uncomfortable around the people who I don't know well or at all, but all seem to know each other. Nonetheless, I push myself to go because I am uncomfortable and until that discomfort goes away, I won't be able to know whether my need to push myself is the discomfort with being "new" or if it's a sincere reflection of a lack of fulfillment with the experience. I would not want to confuse the two and deny myself an opportunity for something unique and enjoyable.

I realize that consistently putting myself into situations which are uncomfortable for me to some extent may make those on the outside - those who stay in their little hidey-holes with their nicely padded comfort zones - think that I'm one of those people who goes out there and doesn't bat an eye at being among strangers, going into places in which I don't "fit in", or doing new things. I am not one of those people. I'm scared and I desire security. It costs me something energetically and psychologically every time I do such things. I often feel stressed and exhausted after such experiences to varying degrees.

Realizing that this is something that I do so often and openly that it may make those who are less "adventurous" think I'm someone I'm not made me think of something I never would have otherwise considered. Those other people out there? Those ones who seem to jump unto the breach, into the fray, or off the cliffs? Maybe they aren't so blithe about it after all. Maybe it's hard for some (or nearly all) of them, too. Maybe, just maybe, they are tired and stressed as well, but they, like me, value growth so much that they're willing to do these things anyway. If so, their situation deserves to be credited as possessing the psychological complexity that it has rather than written off as something that is "easy" for them, but "hard" for me and "impossible" for those who don't pursue such volitional experiences.