Governed by FEAR.

Im talking fear

It took a long time to figure this out and even longer to admit it to myself: I am governed by fear. People don’t speak of it much, it bruises the ego to say something so blunt and to admit being ruled by a feeling. Kendrick Lamar held his fear up in FEAR. a top hit from the award winning album DAMN. and taught me that it can swallow whole years before you notice. Fear doesn’t just consume your life slowly burning it out to flames it halts you, starts to define you.

Fear of losing creativity

I hid my writing like contraband. When I finally flung it into the world, I discovered that my words were not ornaments but flesh. They are skin. Publishing meant exposing not an idea but a shape of me I had never felt comfortable enough to give away. At first I told myself I feared the reactions then I felt the truer thing: I feared being known. To be studied, to be measured and felt. I had no control over how commas would be read, how dash or stanza might be folded into someone else’s life, so the only option felt like surrender and surrender felt like death to my authenticity. So I retreated and named it “writer’s block.” But it was fear. I feared that one day the words would desert me and leave me stranded with an audience who was impatiently waiting for me to say something clever, something that would inspire and I froze. Not because I had nothing to say — I am overflowing — but because it terrified me to let people decide if my mind was worth keeping. That possession of being liked or dismissed was frustrating because I cannot conceal or hide my brain. By trying to protect that thing, I starved it; I fulfilled the prophecy I was most terrified of, I abandoned my creativity.

Im talking fear

Kendrick opens his 7th verse with a line that dug into me: “I’ll probably die anonymous, I’ll probably die with promises.” Whew, he nailed the center of my chest. I have a ledger of dreams and a list of promises I keep like prayers. The idea of dying anonymous with all my promises pressed like coins against my ribs clamps my throat.. Every time I thought of starting something, saying something or doing what I wanted, fear instantly held me back. It wasn’t starting that was hard, the momentum and dopamine that rushed through me when a new idea emerged was enough to put me to task but I’d stop very early on. The moment things grew complicated, the instant I realized I didn’t know enough and would have to toil and fail and learn, I folded. Call me cowardly if you must, but this is not moral failure so much as capture: fear kidnaps the brain and seduces you to stop. The terror of not being good enough — of letting myself fail — was too heavy to imagine. So I never finished my sentences, my ideas, my promises. Projects that might have kept me from dying anonymous, projects that might have required I keep promises to myself, to the world, to God : abandoned.

Fear of missing out on you and me

Fear is hungry for dominion. A controlling bitch. It wants to script not only how I look, but how you see me, what I say but also how you interpret me, what I do and what you think of it. Which is absurd — I can’t stop you from noticing my blemishes, my stutter, from layering your experiences onto my sentences. We live in separate archives. Fear knows this, but it still wants the pen. Kendrick felt it too: “At 27 years old, my biggest fear was bein' judged.” Strange hearing such a confession from someone hailed as great, but fear spares no one. It sirens you into silence, convinces you you don’t deserve this room, this light, this chance it’s a liar, a good one, but still a liar. And the cost is always the same: you miss out on your life. You miss the experiences that were waiting for you and the connections that would have been if you’d simply shown up as yourself.

Im talking fear

Power, shame, doubt — they’re all fear’s foot soldiers. But once you name the enemy, you stop mistaking it for yourself. Fear isn’t as big as it pretends, it’s a shadow, and shadows only live when the light is behind them, it’s always a war within but once you come out as the winner, life will be ready for you. I don’t know if Kendrick ever killed his fear, but I know he never let it kill him, 8 years later after the release of DAMN. and he’s still considered one of the greatest in his lane so why not you? I think what im trying to say is do not let fear govern you, do not let it eat the marrow of your years until you can’t even remember what you wanted. I think I deserve more, a chance to finally do what I spend my days dreaming of and so do you.