I never liked the idea of wearing fancy clothes, neither did I want to wear shirts that weren’t strictly plain or, at the most, had some simple patterns on them. I always thought to myself that I don’t like how these clothes look, that I like the simplicity of plain clothing. I always thought that I liked to wear the basic stuff: a blue or black jeans paired with a white or, preferably, a black shirt. The only exception to this were the few band shirts that I owned. But otherwise my closet looked very plain.

Some time ago I realized that my clothing style had less to do with my liking for plain clothes and more to do with my fear of being judged for who I am. And so, in an attempt to minimize judgement of my personality, I minimized my personality. This could not only be seen on my outside with the clothes, but also in the way I talked about myself and my interests; I never did. If I don’t talk about myself, they can’t judge me, right?

While I made some progress in this regard, I am still nowhere near where I’d like to be. I want to stop letting the fear of judgement determine what I wear or what I talk about, I want to stop being embarrassed for being a beginner at things, I want to stop shielding myself from other people despite them not even attacking; I just want to live a life worth living.

So what is my game plan? How am I going to achieve my dream life? I guess I’m just going to try to be myself whenever I can and when I feel the anxiety creeping up and building a wall in between me and my life, I’m going to ram through that fucking wall as best as I can. And when I feel that the anxiety already got to my head, I’m going to back off and take a pause from living my life and wait it out. There is no way I just plow through life and be ‘healed’ from anxiety forever just like that. Rather I’d like to be able to handle bad situations better and live to my fullest when things are good.

I already see this endeavor failing at some point, but that is just not the point of all this. I will inevitably fail, that’s just life, but what matters to myself more than anything else is that I get up afterwards and keep on going forward, keep on exploring, keep on figuring out and applying those thoughts to my life.

As long as I go forward, I can be happy with the way I live my life.

Ash