comfort in the hopeless emptiness

I have never been more afraid.  There's no cloak to hide behind anymore.  I am finally going to find out what I'm really made of.  

After 5 years at the same job, the same unfulfilling job that failed create any sort of feelings of long term satisfaction, I have decided to take control of my own life.  The fear toyed with me for approximately one year.  Maybe longer.  The void that was a precursor to the fear was a cause of my aimlessness.  The emptiness that came along with the aimlessness was so palpable, but I found ways to fill it.  I wrote it off, I drank, I partied.  I managed to have fun.  I also managed to let 5 years blow right past me.  

I didn't understand why I felt so paralyzed by fear and anxiety.  I was getting older, but I wasn't growing.  Those moments where everything became a blur, where I sought distraction from reality, I began to look within my self and question my purpose.  Was this it?  Was this life?  What was I meant for?  I'd always hoped I'd be destined for greatness, but I suppose I expected greatness to come and sweep me off my feet, to come and save me from the banality of it all.  It had not.  I couldn't even comprehend what kind of greatness I was destined for.  I certainly hadn't excelled at anything just yet.  Then the hopelessness began to seep in.  Perhaps I wasn't destined for greatness after all.  If I was, wouldn't I have achieved it by now?  But the funny thing was, all that time my passions and creative abilities were staring me dead in the face, and I wasn't even paying attention to them.  They were incubating, dormant.  I had never even considered them as abilities.  I wanted to believe I had a chance without really believing it.  I guess I was waiting for someone to rescue to me, to validate me, to save me from myself.  When did I wake up from my trance?  I really don't know.  

All that time, I could always peg my potential failures on my lack of interest in anything I did.  It always felt better to resign myself to not being good enough because I didn't care about it.  It didn't hurt so much that way.  If I cared, failing would be all the more painful.  I desperately wanted to find what I loved, what I excelled at.  I didn't understand why it was taking me so long to find it, when all my peers were pursuing what interested them, and thriving.  I felt alone, useless, ineffectual.  I told myself I didn't care.  I wished for it to find me.  But there's a pattern here, because I continued making myself of victim of circumstance.  In actuality I avoided every opportunity to give myself a chance to do what I loved, because I was so fucking afraid of failure.  I never wanted to even have to deal with the concept of failing, so I never tried.  Not trying was so much safer.

Yet when you don't try for so long, and you let what's bubbling inside you go stagnant, you begin to accept the mediocrity.  You accept the idea that you are incapable of being exceptional.  You are caged, and you have no idea.  You plead for happiness, but security starts to mean more to you.   I could have remained here, in a place devoid of passion.  I was too afraid of anything else for a while.  But then I started to transfer my fear into a different kind of fear.  I began to fear what would happen to me if nothing changed at all, and I continued to live a seemingly mediocre existence.  To possibly confront living in regret.  That really frightened me.  I knew I had to leave myself with no choice in order to take action.  I gritted my teeth and made a choice.  I took a stand on my own behalf.

On September 15th I was laid off from my job of 5 years, and I requested that this happen.  It was a bitter-sweet feeling for the obvious reasons.  I can't say there wasn't a welling in my chest when I walked away from my office for the last time, and that I didn't look back, but I can say I have never felt more free.  I'm finally giving myself a chance.  I've never felt more unsure, fearful, anxious or more alive.