Here are some things I can't get out of my head.
1) I fear that my own prematurely self-realised potential will be my downfall
2) I fear I am such a jumbled mess of creativity and passion and determination so tightly wrapped, that I'll never be able to unravel it into any kind of achievement
3) I fear my lack of discipline and refinement will always plague me until it's too late and all the opportunities are gone
4) I fear I'll go from being what people tell me they regard me as now - 'someone you know is going places' - to someone they'll eventually refer to in passing as: 'You know, I was certain she was going to do something. I was always so sure she was going to create something that would change the world.' to which they'd then sigh and say 'I guess she had all of these ideas, but... she could never actually put them into practice. Such a shame.'
5) I fear that I'll leave it too late. That all of these books and characters and businesses and ideas and art shows and movies and theories were put into my head because I was supposed to birth them into the world, but that I'll fail. And they'll never see the light of day because I was too weak
6) I fear my own desperation for achievement, because I feel the weight of it slowly crushing my optimism, my drive, my determination. The need to create something important in the world is slowly destroying my faith in my ability to actually do it
7) I fear that pressure + talent either equates to greatness, or self-destruction, and I don't believe I'm strong enough to avoid it being the latter
8) I fear I can never be as good enough as the person I've duped myself, and everyone else, into thinking I already am
9) I fear I'm just a kid. I'm a child at a school talent show, standing on stage under a spotlight before that silent patient crowd, knowing that I could blow them all away with what I can do, and I just croak. I place a shaky hand up to that microphone, and I can't even say my name. Then slowly, the teachers realise it isn't going to happen, and the interval music kicks in as conspiratorial mothers turn to one another in the audience and whisper 'Jeez what a waste of time.'
10) And I guess this fear is so strong, because I know it's a self-fulfilling prophecy. If I believe I'm not strong enough, I'm not good enough, I'll never live up to the expectations of me, then I won't. And so the greatest fear of all here, is that I won't be able to snap out of this. That I will cause my own downfall by believing it will happen.
So perhaps I can't quiet these incessant thoughts in my hostile mind, but maybe, I hope and I pray, that I can shout them loudly enough into the wide world, that when they return back as an echo, they'll find their origins have fallen away.
