Now is the moment

I was sitting on my couch last night, curled up in a ball, watching the previous night's Daily Show and scrolling through my facebook feed when all of a sudden a thought pierced my brain.

Now is the moment. 

And I started to feel excited and nauseated and teary.

My girls are in school. I am home alone. For how long have I been telling myself that it was all waiting for now, that this was the moment when I could really "be a writer." That this was my chance to do what mattered to me, to be who I always wanted to be.

Jesus Christ, that's a terrifying thought.

I don't wanna put myself out there, I don't wanna take risks, I don't wanna be rejected and embarrassed and fail.  I just want to stay safe in my cocoon.

But what is it Brene Brown says? "Unused creativity isn't benign. It metastasizes."

I can feel it growing inside of me.

Every day that I don't write, that I don't take steps to in some way TRY to do this thing that I want more than anything and that terrifies me even more than I want it, I start to feel this thing inside me grow. It's dark, and it's hard and scary. It has a voice that tells me "See? You're nobody. You're a quitter. You were never meant to be great or beautiful or anything but ordinary." And every day that I feed it that unused creativity, the words that I'm not putting on paper, the rawness and vulnerability that I don't want anyone to see, it gets bigger. Stronger.

I think I've been waiting for it to blow up. For something to just happen where all of a sudden I couldn't help it anymore and I just needed to finally become.

But that's not how I feel. It's crushing me. It's not pushing out, it's pushing in. It's making me smaller.

Now is the moment.

It's time to explode.