Fear by Tomasina DeLong

What are you most afraid of? This question can dictate one’s life if they let it. You read novels about tragic characters who spend their life trying to avoid their greatest fear. This could ruin their life, and they might end up facing it anyway.

People can be afraid of tangible things like spiders, supernatural things like ghosts, or emotions like loneliness. For me, I am most afraid of failure. Failure is such a general word, so what is it? It means something different to everyone, because “success” is different for everyone as well. For me, I am not afraid of not getting a trophy. I am not afraid of not winning anything in particular.

To me, failure is when I let myself down. I let myself down when I let others down. Everyone is constantly telling me, “you have done it once, so you can do it again.” My dilemma comes when I ask myself: What if it DOESN’T happen again? What if I CAN’T perform well again. What if I DON’T live up to everyone’s expectations? This is where I would let others down, letting myself down as well.

Being surrounded by praise and encouragement creates a happy atmosphere, but I am so sheltered that I won’t know what to do when things don’t go well. Of course, I have not always done well, and I have had bad days, but overwhelmingly my days are good. I’m thinking to myself, “What’s so bad about that? That doesn’t sound too bad at all.”

There is an overwhelming pressure I feel, because not only do I have high expectations for myself, but others have high expectations for me as well. For example, my counselor doesn’t want me to stop taking the ACT until I get at least a 34 or 35, and that is when he will be “content with me stopping.” I understand that he does not decide when I actually will stop taking it, but I know that he has a preconceived notion about me. Whether or not that belief about me is accurate doesn’t matter, because I know it is there and I know it is another expectation I will try to meet.

I am pressuring myself, but I have people surrounding me who are doing the same thing, and it is starting to break me. I know that I have control over how others let me feel, but I am afraid of letting them down.