there's no substitute for time.

I remember when I was young, so young in fact that the premise of life had not yet even crept into my mind. It’s just one of those things, you know, living in that childish bubble of faith, bravery and invincibility where all of the “adult” things seem so far away and my vocabulary was littered with “well, I won’t ever do that”-‘s and “when I grow up, I’m going to be the coolest grown up ever!”-‘s.

(in my defense, I think we all say that.)

…and then one day without warning, you wake up to realize that you’ve made your bed every morning this week and your phone calendar is suddenly reminding you to pay your car registration that’s due next week or (my favorite) your best friend of 12+ years calls to tell you that she is finally, FINALLY, getting married and that she wants you to be her maid of honor.

[yeah, I am pretty dang excited about that last one.]

All of these things come suddenly and out of nowhere, leaving me to wonder just when it was that I took this sharp right turn to Grownupland because if there’s one thing that I’m sure of – it’s that I don’t feel like an adult. It’s more like a feeling of a child trapped in an adult’s body, fumbling around trying to make decisions like the child thinks an adult would, and reacting like a child would when things don’t go EXACTLY RIGHT. Someone somewhere has to be regretting the decision to give me responsibility for anything, ever. And sometimes, I really can’t say that I blame them.

All of this reminds me of a time where everything was much easier, more black and white and simply put, much less scary. I was 11, and there I was standing face-to-face with the absolute biggest fear I had: a rollercoaster. At the time it was absolutely the biggest, fastest most terrifying thing that I had ever laid my tear-filled eyes upon and there was that moment – the moment where I realize (again, at 11) that I can forever be afraid of this ride or, I can just shut up and get on it. It was a simple, black and white, yes or no decision that stood before me and then, it was over.

Sparing the dramatics (I got in line, I cried, I screamed, I cried, I got on it, I cried some more, it ended, I survived, I got on it again, I cried, repeat again.) and the fact that it literally took me three tries of subjecting myself (and my poor mother who still physically cringes when this story is brought up) to such self-torture before I finally realized that I had conquered my fear. And when I say conquered, I really mean that I owned it and I owned it GOOD. That honest to god feeling of triumph and pride from within myself is something that obviously won’t be forgotten any time soon.

Suffice it to say, I don’t know when the paralyzing fear decided to place itself into this life. That overwhelming feeling when faced with any situation wherein the outcome is uncertain, the choice to just walk away always seems to win out now. The black and white of it all, the fearlessness that I once found within myself is gone, and I don’t know how to get it back. I’d like to be able to see situations now as clearly as I saw them before and not be stopped by the fear of the “what ifs.” The “what ifs” need to turn into “so what’s?” and so forth.

So when I think about it, it’s more so of the fact that I just need grow a pair I guess. Stop being scared of the unknown and just make a decision to the best of my ability at the time. If it works out, great. If not? Oh well. And quite frankly, if my 11 year old self can do it, then there really isn’t a reason as to why my 23 (almost) 24 year old self can’t, you know?

And if everything else fails, I can always just go back to the roller coasters.