W is for Worry

As I head into the final few days of my A-Z, I find myself dealing with the tricky letters of the alphabet, and also with the difficulty of finding more random crap to tell you about myself.

So far I think I’ve mostly managed to keep things in a positive light, but that seems a little untrue to real life, because as well as things that make us happy, or memories that we think of fondly, everyone has fears and worries that help to shape who they are.

Those worries and fears aren’t things that you tend to wear on your sleeve, so other people only learn of them after years of knowing you - or maybe you never say them aloud at all, and just carry them around with you ; permanent and invisible baggage.


For a long time I’ve been a fan of the PostSecret website. I like the idea that people have a way to get those deep, dark fears and worries out into the open without having to feel embarrassed or ashamed about them. A lot of it is junk – people just wanting to see their random crap on the web, but in amongst it all, you find cards from people who are willing to say the things they normally keep to themselves.

In the spirit of PostSecret, and of being honest and open about myself in this A-Z, I’ve decided that I’ll share some of my worries and fears. Not the trivial, petty thing that every woman worries about, but the things that I don’t ever say out loud.
This isn’t by any means a full list – it’s actually not even that long. And like most worries tend to be, a lot of them are things that worry me even though I know they have no real foundation. But I’ve decided to share them anyway – it seems the honest thing to do, and maybe writing them down somewhere might make me feel a bit better.

• I worry constantly about my perpetual state of social retardation and whether I have inadvertently offended someone without meaning to; or alienated them from me without intent. Often, after a night out with people who I don’t know especially well, I will lie in bed running various conversations through my head to try and make sure that I didn’t say anything that could be misconstrued.
  
  
• I worry that the things I’m on track for in life aren’t the things that I really want, and that I might end up regretting them later on.
  
  
• I worry that I don’t feel emotional enough about some of the big things that happen in life. Like when my Nanna told me she had to have surgery for cancer. I didn't feel anything about it, and I worry that it means there is something wrong with me, that I've lost some part of myself somewhere.
  

Lastly, more than any other thing:

• I worry that because I’ve never told a single soul about it, I’ll never be able to completely get past the things that happened with KJ & Flavio’s Sister. I worry that it has changed our relationship forever. But I also worry about how it would reflect on me if other people knew, so I’ve never said a word to anyone.

So that’s me at my worst – or at least, at my most insecure. And that’s all I have to say about that.


This entry is part of my ‘A-Z of Me’ Series. 26 Days of alphabetically ordered random crap about me and my life. You can read the rest here.