Limitations

I was a late bloomer. When I was younger, I had trouble finding my place in things. I was so afraid that I would not fit in that I avoided any opportunity to try. I slowly narrowed myself down to only things that I could not fail at. I wore a lot of black and tried to blend in. I also built limitations into myself. Convinced myself that I could not do things and blocked them off as possibilities. Dressing fashionably, dancing, athletics, and many other things were simply out of my reach. I kept my head down and just tried to survive school. So many years were wasted hiding.

Sometime after high school I lost interest in hiding and became convinced of my own worth. Since that epiphany I have slowly been discarding my limitations. I have attempted a marathon and become a semi-regular runner. I have made a widespread network of friends (when I used to be to afraid that I was bothering people to call them). I have started dance lessons. I am casting off all of my old notions of what I could not do. It is amazing to ask myself "why not?" when confronted with a new situation; where I once would have been afraid of the views of my peers, I now jump in and make it my own.

It has been a long journey, from a place of constant self doubt to the realization that everyone is either trying to get along or doesn't care about your silly antics. This is a very liberating realization, and I feel much less compulsion to just get along and more able to indulge in my silly antics. I wish I could teach this to a few people I know, but it seems to be so personal of a realization that you can only come upon it yourself (or perhaps in a dream within a dream?).