Every night I face my worst fear

No, I’m not afraid of the dark…much. It’s not a fear of being alone, in fact sometimes I think I could use a bit more “me time”. It’s a fear of myself, and my mind. In the dark of the night is when I am truly alone, with the light of the full moon glinting off the winter snow as my only companion. And when I am alone there is only one thing to do. Think. Explore the dark corridors of my mind, which is just as filled with traps and mysteries as the mind of Yami. And I am my own worst enemy, so these times of deep thought are usually also intense internal struggles with some aspect of myself that I have only just discovered hidden in a dark crevice of my mind. And even when I sleep I explore my mind. In fact, through sleep I can achieve levels of exploration previously impossible. In my dreams I walk the dark corridors of my mind fully unarmed, with no escape. If I’m awake I can escape anytime by distracting myself and thinking of something else. But in my dreams I am trapped. Last night I had one of these mind exploring dreams that was quite interesting, and made me face my worst fear. And, as with all things that make me think hard, to help me process it I’m blogging about it. Let me tell you about it.

I stood in a lush green field filled with other young people my age. In front of us was an enormous mountain, with it’s top high in the clouds. The sides were sheer rock as flat as a wall and there was no way of even dreaming of climbing it. But on the side of the mountain was the purple and gold Houghton College sign. And I knew that Houghton was on top of this mountain. A young man walked to the front of our group, a cool and capable looking guy with skater cargo pants and a T-shirt with some cool writing on it, and faced us. He said “well, to get to Houghton we’re all going to have to grow wings.” “Grow wings?”, I thought, “That’s impossible, there must be another way” but before I could object, a beautiful and confident looking girl next to me stepped forward and slowly two beautiful white wings full of pure white feathers grew out from the back of her tank-top. And one by one all of my fellow students grew wings and flew off, up to the brightness on the top of the mountain. And I tried and I tried but I could grow no wings. I tried flapping my arms and was laughed at by the few that remained. Finally they all flew off and left me completely alone, staring at my shoes and feeling horrible. I knew it was because they were better than me that they had wings and I didn’t. And I knew there was nothing I could do about it.

Then I woke up, looked at my clock. It was after 1 A.M. I went to the bathroom and then went back to sleep, mostly forgetting my dream. Then when my alarm went off I woke up with the dream burning in my mind. So as I went through the day I kept it in the back of my mind, working on it subconsciously. When walking to the Methodist church with Anneli for bible study we got into the topic of dreams (she’d had an odd dream about a mutual acquaintance, who we haven’t seen in a long time) and I told her about mine. And she when she casually remarked “Maybe it means something…” all the subconscious thinking bubbled to the surface and I realized what the dream was, and I needed to blog about it. I had faced my own worst fear. I don’t fear death, I fear pain very little, and the future doesn’t exist, there is only the present, so I try to keep my mind in the present. I fear my own inadequacy, my own worthlessness. In the dark of the night the worst thing I face is my failures. And my biggest fear about college, and for most of the world, is being inadequate. Like many homeschoolers I fear that since I didn’t study Martian nuclear aquatic astro-physics in school like everyone else did I’ll end up looking stupid, and failing everything. Now for the most part this is irrational. I was accepted to Houghton. But it’s still my greatest fear. There are so many areas where I feel inadequate, from math to handwriting, that I feel like I’m too stupid to do anything. Because I can’t grow wings. But recently I’ve made a motto to arm myself with as I go out into the world. “Be Tenacious” What does that mean? Here’s a few definitions I found for tenacious, “stubborn, resolute, steadfast, true, persevering, persisting” So if I can’t grow wings, I’ll make them. Or I’ll grab the foot of one of my flying classmates and hang on until I reach my destination. Or I’ll take a knife, and hack hand and foot holds from the bottom of that mountain all the way to the top. I’m tenacious, and despite my insecurities and fear of inadequacy, I will doggedly fight on until I get where I’m going, destroying any obstacles in my way. And lucky for you, I’ll write it all here, so keep reading!

Chris
“Be Tenacious”