And so we begin

The only part that makes 100% of sense all the time is the actual writing, so I'll start with that.

I'm someone who worries a lot about the why, about the what's next, about what people are going to think.  I'm someone who wants to be in control of things, who likes to know what the whole plan is before I start.  I'm someone who gets hurt easily, who doesn't take criticism well, who doesn't adjust well to change.

I don't want to be ashamed of those things.  I want to accept them. And I want to slowly let them go.

I'm afraid.

I'm afraid that if I put myself out there and I'm real then I might hurt someone's feelings.  Then I might get rejected. Then I might make a fool of myself when everyone realizes that I'm actually no good, have no worth, am really at my core just messy and useless and small.

I don't wanna.  I don't wanna.  I don't wanna.

When I was in tenth grade, my English class did a project where we had to create a utopia.  In the first part, we were to imagine we were stranded on a desert island.  We were given a list of other survivors and had to choose which of them we would bring.  A doctor, a teacher, a sailor.  There were more.  I don't remember.

What I remember is this.  I looked my teacher in the face and said "This is absurd.  We wouldn't be picking them. They'd be picking us.  We're all the same.  We all have the same things to offer."

I liked to be an intellectual troublemaker.  I liked to be tough.  I liked to be seen as willing to stand up for something.

That was a long time ago.

But what he did next was to tell us that we all had to take a piece of paper and write down what unique thing we had to offer.  And I was stubborn.  I was prideful.  I wrote "I said I had nothing. I meant it."

This is my biggest fear.  That I don't have anything to offer.  That I'm not special.  That I'm never going to be special.

I pour the words onto the page or onto the screen and I let them go.  It's the only thing I can do.

I am a mom.  But I am more than a mom.  Somewhere, deep inside and long forgotten, there is someone else. And I want to believe that I can be a mom and a person at the same time.

I want to believe.