Sweet Girl, Do Not Let Your Fear Keep You From Your Dreams

Change is scary, that’s a given. Change is the unknown, the wondering, that grey area just outside of your comfort zone which makes you chew at your fingernails and lose sleep. But change is constant, unavoidable, exciting.

And sometimes, just sometimes, it may be the best thing to ever happen to you.

At least that’s what I’m telling myself as I stand at a crossroads between a new life, and the life I have known this past year. The life which is comfortable, stable, and predictable. The life which I am happy with, but that doesn’t challenge me or push me, doesn’t give me that wonderful fuzzy feeling deep inside my stomach when I sink my teeth into a new project.

It is easy and I could live this way forever, but I know one day I’d wake up and regret it. I would regret not throwing myself into the unknown and chasing after my dreams just because I was a little scared. I would resent every single person in my life for making me want to stay behind; I would not reach my full potential and that is scarier than anything which exists beyond these city borders.

So as these days drift by and I am suddenly standing on the train platform, holding nothing but a suitcase and a heart full of memories, I will remind myself of the days I felt hopeless because of my dead end job, and the nights I went to bed in a tiny room in a tiny apartment with three middle-aged strangers whom spoke all of two words to me in the year I lived there.

I will fight against the aching inside me and know that the people who have come into my life this past year will still be there, and the distance between us will only bring us closer. I will look forward to late night texts with my boyfriend, just like the early days when neither of us wanted to sleep because it meant being apart. I will crave the warmth of his body beside me whenever I roll over to the empty side of the bed and a smile will spread across my face at the thought of him there with me soon.

But most importantly I will know that I am doing this for me, just me.

I will know that the life I had before this one, the life with a mortgage and a cat and a routine was not meant for me; I will know I was meant to stop writing that chapter and begin this one. I will know that every single decision I have made up until this point was to bring me here. That the days I spent crying to my friends because I could not see a way out, I couldn’t figure out a plan to get to where I wanted to be were worth it, they were all part of this journey.

Because life is funny that way, it has a way of working itself out, of enabling us to end up exactly where we are meant to. It has a way of challenging us and giving us opportunities to better ourselves, we just have to be brave enough to reach out with both hands and take them. We have to rise above the fear, the anxiety, the voice inside our heads that tells us we can’t do it, that we will fail, that we should stay where it is easy and comfortable and familiar.

But we shouldn’t because no great story begins with staying in the same place.

No dreams would ever be realized, none of the beautiful places in this world would ever be explored, and no two people from completely backgrounds would ever fall in love. Nothing amazing or magical would ever happen to anyone.

And so that is why you must take a leap and fly, that is why you must flutter those wings you’ve been burying beneath your fear and soar high, and see the world in all of its messy, magnificent glory because sweet girl, it may just be the best thing which has ever happened to you.

It may just change your life. So are you ready? Get set, fly.