Finally Jumping
I have this memory from my childhood that has stuck with me for my whole life. I was young, around maybe 5, 6, 7 range and I had this friend that was the younger brother of some of my brother's friends. Anyway, there was this one time when it was a group of us playing, maybe like 4 of us. We were running around and Stephen had this little bitty creek near his front yard. All the boys were jumping across the creek from a small embankment. I knew even then that it was small and I probably wouldn't be hurt if I jumped from it to the other side of the creek. But I couldn't make myself do it. No matter how hard I tried or what Steven did to try and get me across I couldn't make myself jump. That feeling of wanting to do something but not being able to make myself has stuck with me. I felt it throughout my childhood in similar, physical situations. I felt it in almost any social situation when I just couldn't make myself talk to somebody or perform on stage or well pretty much anything. I felt it when I came to UGA. I probably could have gone somewhere else. Don't get me wrong, I love it here and I don't think I made a mistake by going here. But I feel a large reason I am here is because I was too scared to try to go somewhere else. I only applied to one other school for both undergraduate and graduate school. I've never been a big risk taker and every time I have the chance to do something big and instead go what I know is safe, what I know I'll succeed at, I feel the same tightness and anxiety and heart pounding that I did when I was a kid. For a long time I was afraid that I wouldn't be able to go on Testosterone because I was afraid of backing out. I was afraid more than anything that I wouldn't be able to make myself put that needle into my flesh. Today I self-injected for the first time. And it felt really good. It felt good to make myself do something that I was afraid of doing. In the past year and a half or so I've been trying to make myself do things that I have never done before. Things that I've always pussed out on. Today felt like I won't have to worry that I'll ever back out of an opportunity just because I'm scared again. From now on I think I'll be able to make myself jump.