THURSDAY TALES: STARTING TO LIKE YOU

I'm starting to like you and it scares me.

Until now, it didn't matter. You were just a person and I was just a person, and we were just two persons living in the same world, not mattering to each other. It didn't matter if we messed up or if one of us thought the other person was weird or crazy. Because we were just two people. Two people who didn't matter.

But I'm starting to like you.  And it starts to matter. It matters what you think of me, even if the world tells me that I shouldn't care about that. It matters what I think of you. What you do matters. I suddenly want you to be someone who is worthy of my respect and my affection. I want you to be all you can be, and I want to be all I can be - because I want to be someone who is worthy of yours.

And this all scares me.  There's so much more pressure now than when we were just two people who didn't matter. Now we matter. Now what I do and say, it all matters. And maybe it always mattered, but now I'm suddenly aware of it.  I guess that's a good thing.

It is a big world and, with so many people in it, it can start to feel like it doesn't matter - like we don't matter.  How could we? We're but pebbles dropped into a big ocean. And so to be suddenly faced with our own mattering, it can be a lot to get our heads around. And it's a little frightening to realize that you matter. That what you do and what you say and what you think and what you feel... it all matters. It's important.

And suddenly I can't go back to thinking I don't matter and that you don't matter and that we don't matter.  Because I know the truth now. I know I was wrong.




It all matters.

FEARS ON FIRE

"The way their eyes follow me, laughing with malice, across the room."

Her pen came to the end of the line and she dropped it at her side.  Ripping the paper off the notebook, she folded it in half twice and set it on the top of the others.

"The time I tripped in front of the whole class."

"The day they told me to meet them at the Dairy Queen and then they all went to Starbucks instead."

A whole stack of them.

"How I'm afraid I'll never be good enough."

"How I can never seem to say the right thing."

"How my dreams seem so unattainable."

She fingered the last one and picked it up, turning it over slowly in her hands. Moving almost as if in a dream, she lit the first match and touched it to the paper, watching it begin to crumble into flame.  Releasing it into the air, she picked up the next piece and set it on fire, too.  One by one, she went through the entire stack until the air around her was filled with the burnt embers of her fears and insecurities.

She sat there in the grass, watching it all burn.

She sat there until every flame died away.

Then, she stood up and walked away. Today would be different.