It Feels Like This. Until I Tell Myself It Doesn't.

It's the split of knowing in your bones you are meant for something else. But, on the other side, the feel of the routine - feet pounding the downtown pavement in secure, happily paid steps. The fear, then, comes in and it's weighty. It's one of wondering if what you were meant for was to be the person in the office that was meant for other things. That you're too late to leap now. That foolishness would have been rewarded before. But by now, you've shown the world you don't believe in yourself enough.

There is a grace some of them have. As though they've cast off the insecure weight. It isn't that they don't have their own anvils, albatrosses, gravity shoes, or their own metaphors to bear. But there is a carefree air to one who stands tall in saying, "I HAVE A RIGHT TO PERFORM AND WRITE AND MAKE IT MY JOB." It's beautiful to behold. I long for it. This isn't about the huge percentage of that proclamation that is out of your control. This is about owning the ask, claiming the fight to be heard and seen as a worthwhile one.

Others see you differently. Kinder than you see yourself. But just as you begin to allow that kind view in -- that OF COURSE you can do this -- you tell yourself that's complacency and laziness. That multitudes more deserving and talented and experienced aren't achieving what you're trying. So let it go. But you can't. You can't fucking let it go. It's always there.

And so.

The process starts all over again, while your feet pound the downtown pavement, a little sadder, a little more defeated. Until those steps are no longer guaranteed to bring security. Until that magnet is being ripped out from your shoes. The split you've hidden for so long is now massive, a rip through your cool facade. It bleeds into everything. It's messy.

Because you are being called up.

It's now or never and not believing in your own ability to make the leap is a sure way to fall on your face. The weight, the doubt, the fear, it has to go. It's chaining you to the ground and you'll never feel the air, the grace of claiming your worth, if you don't shed it now. What good does it do to carry it now? None at all. All to gain.

Leap. But...the doubt...but...the leap...but the fear...but...the leap...