People Problems

Fear is such a funny thing, isn’t it? 

It’s so often totally irrational and silly and scary and strange and big and impossible to explain but painfully real. 

I’m usually rather (very) anxious and so fear has always seemed to me something that comes with the territory of being, at the best of times, an overthinking nervous wreck. And while fear always seems somewhat in the peripheries of so much, over the last few years I cultivated my own little fearsome monster, except it hid not under the bed but in all the corners of my mind: the fear of people.

How embarrasing, right? Scared of my kind. But social isolation was a game I thought I was really good at. An introvert getting to spend every day alone? Dream. Until it wasn’t. Until it turned people into threats. Friends into danger. Conversation into dread. Anxiety into identity.

At the end of last year and the end of an already-tethered rope, with no confidence and no connection, I realised that if I carried on this way I would certainly be doomed to lonely cat lady status. And I do not like cats.

Something had to change and that something was me. The steps have felt slow, scary, stupid. Oftentimes hidden behind a mask of smiles. I’ve learnt that saying yes to community does not always come naturally to me, but my goodness is it needed.

The fear isn’t gone. It might never be? But if the last few months of discomfort have taught me anything it’s that there are people whose capacity for kindness is far greater than the casualties left behind by fear.

I’ve met people who have reminded me that humanity is quite beautiful. People who are so patient, so generous, so welcoming, people who’ll listen, people who’ll let you learn, people who’ll share their stories, people who’ll give their time, people who’ll let you crawl out of that self-made shell and remind you it’s better on the outside, even if it’s scary. 

I’m grateful for those people. The people who have made the littlest things mean the most and the biggest hurdles feel possible to jump. 

I’ve got a ways to go. 

The dust is still settling. 

But we’re moving. 

And that’s something.