I’m afraid that people won’t like me. It colors a multitude of my actions.
I don’t speak much in a group setting. I avoid eye contact. I stick to customary greetings and interactions, almost to the point of rudeness sometimes. Like I didn’t care enough to show up. People who do spend time getting to know me seem surprised to learn how thoughtful and sincere I can be. I just don’t show it to many because I’m scared.
Fear of rejection affects my aspirations as well. I was born to be a storyteller, always brimming with ideas. There are piles of notebooks scattered throughout my house with plot summaries and storyline diagrams. The act of creating is deeply personal and very beautiful. But. There is this sense of terror- or maybe it’s dread- that I might pour my entire soul into a project and have my efforts met with yawns. What would I do then? For what purpose would I live? To be rejected or misunderstood is an odious fate.
Better to stall. Find a reason to push off that project. Find a different project and get caught up in the “planning phase” of that one for a while. I seem to do this effectively, scattering my focus and never stopping to act. That book will never get written at this pace. Which some days is fine by me; there’s a monster at the end of the book. Better to keep it safely in the future than to meet it face to face.
I guess babies are the same way. It scares me to think of creating a human being and then looking it in the eyes. What would I see? Would she be proud of her father? Would he want to be like dad? Would they like my stories?