My mother and I had a conversation about fear earlier this week. She said sometimes fear is good. And sure, that’s true. Gut instinct is often fear-based and can save your life. But fear can also be arbitrary, induced by others unnecessarily, or chemical. If you’re like me and you have anxiety and witchily good gut instincts both, it can be very hard to figure out what to do with fear.
There were also all those times I was told not to climb on the playground lest I “bust my head open.”
Learning to skate is really hard physical work. For me, it’s also really hard mental work.
And today, I am so tired.
But that’s because I was awesome.
I went to the rink where I take lessons for their public skate. It was pleasantly unpopulated, and I managed to go from marching around the ice and trying to be less frightened to actual proper skating. Only for like 20 feet at a time, because then I’d get nervous or almost die via toe pick (seriously, I know I’ll be glad for it later, but it’s freaking me out) or get frowny at water puddles on the ice (the rink is on a rooftop under a bubble, and there are sometimes these spots on warmer days).
I did seven laps, which is more than I’ve done at any one time and my heart racing terror thing only happened very briefly once towards the end of the session when I was really tired. I didn’t want to get off the ice. I was so happy. And I’m hoping I can go again on Saturday (different rink) and actually show my instructor this progress on Sunday. I get so jangly sometimes though.
So that’s it. I did the thing today. You can do the thing too. It probably won’t even kill you. No matter what people have said.
Letters from Titan 