My Biggest Personality Flaw. Let Me Show You It.

Listening (obsessively) to: "Day of the Baphomets" by The Mars Volta

For those of you with less than a square inch of common sense (or who haven't read/disagree with my long rant on the subject), this post is going to seem "emo" to you. For the rest of you, it will probably fall under the category of "human" or "natural" or something similar. I literally just discovered this about 10 minutes ago, and never before have I felt so compelled to make a completely meaningless and irrelevant post on something as to use all caps, a habit which I typically despise. You're just lucky I didn't make the font all huge (it's tempting though).

Okay. *inhales*. Here goes.

MY BIGGEST FLAW IS THAT I AM AFRAID OF EVERYTHING.

Yes. Everything.

And the thing of it is, not only am I AFRAID of EVERYTHING, it seems that I DO everything OUT OF FEAR.

As I think back on every little thing I do on an average day, I realize that this is true for at least most of them. And when I say "fear", I don't mean the kind of uber-phobia, "oh em gee that chick from the Ring is going to eat me and the world is ending before I could TiVo the last episode of The Office" kind of fear. I mean the kind where it's like "oh crap I gotta do this, find that, hurry up, slow down, study harder, practice often, get more sleep, talk to my friends, be nicer to my family, update my blog, and hope to God I can get it all done before tomorrow inevitably catches up with me and that the stuff I choose to do today is the right stuff because I only have so much time to get it all done."

Let me explain. In a nutshell, here's my average day:

6:30-8 AM, I'm in fear of looking like crap and being late.


8:15 AM-2:45 PM, I'm in fear of getting bad grades (except 9:07-10:04 ^^), being late, saying/doing something idiotic, and having a blonde/klutz incident.

2:45-2:50, I'm afraid of missing the bus, not getting my own seat, or having to sit next to someone who isn't particularly fond of me.

3:15-???, I'm afraid of getting bad grades, not getting enough sleep/food, pissing off my parents, getting pissed off at my sister, not having enough time to interact with my friends, and having mental breakdowns.


Does this look a lot like YOUR typical day? Are you reading this and thinking "Pfft! What a drama queen!". Well, I don't blame you. A good majority of people have days that are, more or less, following the same general patterns as mine. (and I do tend to be a bit dramatic...). Granted, if you're an adult, this changes a bit, ie things like work rather than school, but it's close enough. You sit at a desk and file papers and write reports and do as your master says. Because you're afraid of getting fired/expelled if you don't.


I don't get it. Is it just me? Am I making something out of nothing? Does anyone else get this way? Is it the way society and the media expect us to behave, and so we inevitably do so? Is it a natural survival instinct thingamadoohicky? What? What IS it?


I've heard a lot of cliched little sayings like "the greatest risk is not taking one" and "the only thing to fear is fear itself" and "Well, you can't not let ANYTHING happen to him. Cause then NOTHING would ever happen to him. Not much fun for poor little Pablo." (yes, that was a quote from Finding Nemo. Deal with it.). And, well, they're kind of true. When I get my homework done, get A's and B's, etc, my parents are happy and they say "Good job! Keep it up!" and that's it. Nothing really happens (except that I go through a mental list of all the less productive things I'd rather have done with my time). But if I get an F, or even a C, I get a lecture, a "why did you do this?!", a "grades are important!! Do you want to go to college or not?!", and maybe even a "no *insert fun privilege thingy here* until you've studied more!". And something has happened. It's not a good something, but it's something. The same goes for any of the other above. I'm late, I get yelled at; I have a bad hair day, I feel like people are looking at me weird (although they probably don't care anyway, as they shouldn't); you get the idea. But if the choice is between nothing and something which is bad, then which is preferable? That sounds so...I dunno, pessimistic? Which isn't what I'm trying to say at all. Maybe the whole "fear of failing" thing is just the half-empty version of saying "desire of success". But "avoiding failure" doesn't really feel like "success", it just feels like "whew, that was close! Glad I managed not to screw up THAT one!". And maybe that's just my twisted personal psychology. Or maybe it's because I've simply done what's expected of me rather than anything worth considering a "success". Ever have one of those times when you've done something you're really proud of, and you announce it loudly and obnoxiously for the world to hear, except that the world Doesn't. Freckun. Care.? And you KNOW it's not THAT big of a deal, but it's still something YOU accomplished and you wish SOMEone, ANYONE, would just look at your brilliant stick-figure drawing or perfectly-half-cleaned bedroom for a moment and say something along the lines of "Wow....nice!"? (*sigh* Yes, I am a drama queen, we went through this two paragraphs ago, let's move on now, shall we?). Well, if you haven't, then that means that either A. Everything you've ever done has been praised and adored by all (not likely), or B. You've never accomplished anything you would consider worth noting, and therefore have very low self-esteem or very high self-expectations or simply don't care about doing anything with your life, or some combination of those. Which isn't very likely either. So chances are you know what I'm talking about. And you know how much it SUCKS. Because that stick person drawing took you a whole 15 minutes to do, plus 5 minutes of careful planning, drafting, and thumbnails. It was a truly original piece, straight from the heart, classically inspired and modernly crafted, and although it ought to be in the frickin' Lourve, you have to pay a daily rate to have it stuck by a magnet on your refrigerator.

Hmm that was a bit of a tangent, now where the helck was I going with that...?

Oh, right. So, anyway...more maybe's. Maybe I'm one of those low self-esteem people who needs someone else's encouragement/approval/praise in order to feel like I've done anything right, and I just need to learn to realize on my own when I've done something well. But then I might end up becoming a cocky butthole and think that everything I do is perfect. Or I might sink lower and hate everything I do. Is this one of those things that everybody except me learned to master when they turned 9, and my brain is, once again, lagging behind in the "social skills" department? I dunno...maybe I just need a reality check, or a (lack of?) sanity check, or a "you just spent 45 minutes typing about NOTHING, you foolish woman" check. Or someone with a lot of money could write me a check with a long number on it aaannnndddd...that would solve very few of my problems and would probably create a few more.

Sigh. I'm still afraid. Of everything. Of things happening and things not happening and whatever's in between, if there is such a thing.

I guess the main thing is trying and doing the things I WANT to do and not worrying about if I'm going to fail at them and letting the rest sort itself out because there's not much I can do about them anyway. Which probably isn't as easy as it sounds but I'm going to make it happen...somehow...O_o...

That was pretty much completely pointless. If anyone made any sense out of that, please, PLEASE, leave a comment and enlighten me...although if anyone actually just READ through that whole thing I will be absolutely amazed and slightly scared. Again.

Hmm. I might decide that it was a stupid idea to post this at all. If you see this and then all of a sudden you don't, I've probably taken it down entirely, and that would be why. Sorry.