face your fears

That's something easier said than done, am I right? I am right. Unless you're some sort of superhero, but even then you have your weakness. So, I'm still right.

A morning yoga class a week or so ago, a lady had one of those Lululemon bags with inspirational quotes written all over it, and while in downdog or some twisting pose I found myself craning my neck to read a blurb or two. One line that really jumped out at me was "do one thing that scares you every day." It seemed like it had been a while since I did something outside of my comfort zone, and so I nodded my head and thought, Yeah! Let's live this life! Luckily I was given an opportunity later in the day to do just that. My friend Dizzle (he's a local and has taken me to so many spots tucked around the island that I would never have found without his guidance) picked me and Lindsay up because we had the afternoon off and took us to this area in Yona (Y is J and put a tilde over the n - "jotnea"ish) called Turtle Cove.

Pretty isn't it? When we got there there was a group of boys jumping off a cliff to the side (behind us in the above picture; where I was swimming from in the first picture) and Dizz informed me and Linds that we would be doing the same. Alright! I thought, thinking myself cured from my fear of heights after testing myself at Arielle's Cove in Boracay. My first fears to overcome at Turtle Cove were the shark paranoid thoughts I was imagining as I snorkeled through the strong current and murky waters. I came out unscathed physically, but emotionally my heart was beating like a drummer marching into battle.

As you see in the second picture, the sun was beginning to sink behind the scenery and it was time to jump sooner than I would've liked. To ensure it was safe, Linds and I had Dizz go first. He dove like a pro. "I'm going to jump," I told Lindsay. She said she was going to too. We clambered up the craggy coral and I found myself frozen in fear as I peered over the edge. I cursed myself because while it was about a 20-25ft jump, I'd jumped off higher without much fuss; I didn't know what it was this time, but I just couldn't jump. I stood atop the cliff unable to move; fearful that if I took one step the wind would blow me straight over and into the rocks below. Dizz reassured me that I would have to try really hard to smash into the rocks - almost impossible to accomplish - slightly setting my worried mind at ease. Five... ten minutes, who knows how long it was I stood there. Lindsay was back up for a second jump, trying to convince me to do it. "It's so much fun, Kate! Just jump!" I told her I knew it would be and that I wanted to, but I just couldn't get my mind and body to cooperate with one another. "I believe in you!" And that's when I said that I didn't believe in myself. It was kind of a shock to hear it come out of my mouth, but it was/is(?) absolutely true. And it's not just in the jumping at that moment, but in a recent string of events that I've been too inside my head about. I have dreams that I'm afraid I won't be able to accomplish because of nothing more than myself standing in my way. Most of it involves writing, because I think I've been thinking about it more than I've actually been doing it, and like everything else, you need to practice/try to see improvements.

"Just step off and scream." I took a deep breath, stepped off and put my hands into a prayer position; quietly I fell into the sea. It wasn't hard, and it wasn't painful. It was actually fun, and definitely scarier for me to swim back - again, I was thinking in shark vision - and I learned that I'm actually a really fast swimmer if I think my life is in danger. Good to know? (It's like when I had to run the Mile in middle school PE and I would imagine the killer from Scream chasing me on the last lap or two to get me going just a little faster. It's just like that, except this shark thing happens even when I don't want it to.) I jumped one more time before we had to leave. Jumping was invigorating not only in the rush of adrenaline from scaring the crap out of myself, but also in that I didn't give up and I went for that leap of faith. Now I just need to work on believing in myself when no one is around to convince me I can do something - note: I think that I think I can do most things, but I'm really sensitive about my writing more so than anything else because it's an extension of myself and it's really one of the only things that I'm passionate about that I may be remotely good at, and it's kind of scary to put yourself out there and say "Hey! This is me." and then to think of someone saying, "No, no, no. You're no good." is a really heartbreaking feeling - scary enough to make me not even want to try, but I do want to try, and - as you can see I'm a conundrum.

[By the by, I'm not writing this for want of you to say to me, "Hey. I like your writing! Don't be as scared as you are right now because you think you just saw a monster of a cockroach run across your floor, because it was just your imagination, even though there have been three monster bug killings in the last two days... it's just your imagination." That's not what I want. I'll get to the Man v. Cockroach maybe next post. Seriously, they are vomitrociously big out here. And really, that's not why I write this blog. I'm just telling you what's up because I don't see you hardly ever and can't ramble to you every time I have something to ramble about.]

So, I'm going to take another leap of faith here and share the beginning of an introduction to a collection of short stories that I'm working on. It may just end up being a crazy dream, but I'm going for it. I hope you like it? It still needs work - ah, no apologies. This is what I've got:

[began on December 3, 2010 - crossed out and rewritten many times since, probably many more times to follow]

She seemed so confident as we spoke on the patio outside of the Reggae bar in Chiang Mai. Using grand gestures that moved the stars she spoke about the places she had seen with eyes this big. But then she spoke about her lifelong dream and began to draw back within herself; she grew quiet and made meek movements. Her dream was something she had wanted for so long, and now within steps of reaching it, she grew scared imagining she never would. Always out there, taunting on the horizon it stood like a ship, tall and real, but it wasn’t permanent - none of them were - it just looked the most prominent from the fleet. Developed more so than the others, her dream became a beacon in a sea of fog that was the rest of her life. Constantly she would find herself turning and searching the sea, straining her eyes for proof that the dream was really still there - that reaching it could be a legitimate possibility. One day. But what would she do if one day she found it was gone without notice? What if the dream simply slipped away in the middle of the black moonless night? Would she be surprised after having stayed on shore all this time, doing nothing but staring at it out there, without doing a thing but look and long. She knew she had to take action before something like that was given time to take place. Every time she came close to readying herself she got scared at seeing the choppy, uncertain seas, rolling blue and crashing white. Nothing is certain in life, she knew that, but the fear of drowning terrified her. What if my boat tipped over she worried. What if the waters were infested with sharks. That’s all they were - what if’s. What if her boat didn’t? What if the seas were empty? You’ll never know unless you try she shouted to herself. Many nights she stood crying at the shore, paralyzed by her fear to act. Until the night when she saw the dream began to flicker and she rushed out, rowing, under starry skies.


PS - would you turn the page after reading the blurb above or would you shake your head, put the book back on the table and walk away? Feedback of any kind would be greatly appreciated.
Danke.