Hi, My Name is Celina, and I’m a Recovering Fearaholic

When I was in college, I bought my dad a silver paperweight. In black Courier New letters, this quote was engraved: “What would you do if you knew you could not fail?” I was at an age where I was exploring everything the world was offering to me. The landscape was limitless. Since I lived at home while I was in college, I saw my dad’s unhappiness and depression everyday. It wasn’t the stereotypical depression of constant crying or being unable to get out of bed. On the contrary. He got up everyday and went to work, and for the first couple years, we commuted together. I would drop him off at his building in downtown Houston and then make my way a few more miles to the University of Houston campus. We would chat during the hour long drive about all sorts of things. I would tell him about my classes, what books we were reading, how I couldn’t understand a word my German algebra teacher was saying. I remember one time, I was telling him how it probably wasn’t the most practical thing to be an English major. I knew I wouldn’t make much money, and most people assumed all I could do was be an English teacher (which I am now, by the way). In response my dad said this: “Do what makes you happy. In the end, that’s all that matters.” Our culture, and society, and parents, and teachers all tell us this, but most of them don’t really mean it. What they mean is, “Do what makes you happy until it’s time to be an adult…and then do the responsible thing.” Most of us choose the so-called responsible route because it promises stability, and the opposite of stability is chaos…and that terrifies us.
Many of us wake up, drearily make our way to a building where we work for someone else to make their dreams come true. There is absolutely nothing wrong with that if it truly makes you happy. But there are a lot of people yearning to do something different, but that something different was put on a shelf or became a hobby and nothing more. Usually this place we go to everyday doesn’t spark our imagination, or our creativity, or our purpose. Also, when I say creativity, I don’t mean just painting, or singing, or writing. Creativity to me means that thing that gets your blood pumping; it’s that thing that you love to tell people about and that you can’t wait to do on the weekends. While I’m at it, let me clarify “purpose”. Most of us hear purpose and think that means working selflessly to raise money for the homeless or abandoned puppies, which, wow, that would be great if we all had callings like that. But what I really mean is, what is it that you love to do, make, teach, or talk about that others would appreciate, understand, buy, eat, or experience? I believe we all have that inside of us if we got quiet enough to listen. And what if we finally do sit still, quiet the clatter around us, and we start to hear that voice telling us to go after that thing we turned our back on when we were 12, or 18, or 25? What do we do with that? We have been conditioned to fear anything that doesn’t look like comfort, so we grind day in and day out, possibly making ourselves sick and most definitely we are more and more depressed. In a study published in the Journal of Social Service Research, it was found that people who “create a sense of purpose and meaning in their lives, and seek to find and experience their true self, experience fewer symptoms of depression and anxiety.” One of my favorite quotes is from Cathy Heller, queen of the indie side hustle and creator of one of my favorite podcasts, Don’t Keep Your Day Job. She says, “I believe that the opposite of depression isn’t happiness, it’s purpose.” When we have something that we choose to do because we want to do it out of love, not out of fear of not having a steady paycheck or a 401K, we are fulfilling our purpose. I’m not saying we all have to start our own business or up and quit our jobs tomorrow and embark on a quest to discover our purpose. I’m suggesting that we stop shooing away that voice that tells us loud and clear every day that we are meant for something better and something greater. It tells us in very clear ways. When we want to come home from work and binge on whatever numbs us (food, alcohol, Netflix, even going to the gym), when we spend our entire weekend recovering from the work week, when our bodies have had enough and are trying to get our attention through pain or disease — these are signs that we need more purpose in our lives.
You may be thinking that I’m just one of those New Age, self-help hippies who is sitting here telling you what to do, and that I make it sound so easy but that I have no idea how hard it is. The truth is, I do love me some reiki and crystals, and I do have all of Brene Brown’s books on my night stand (she’s incredible!), but I am here trying to convince you of this, because I am a recovering fearaholic. Despite my dad telling me to go after my dreams and live my passions, I already had a history of playing small. I was afraid of so many things as a child. I was afraid to talk to other kids, because I was convinced they wouldn’t like me. I was afraid to continue with gymnastics once they started to teach us how to do back handsprings, because I was convinced I would get hurt. I was afraid to ask for help with math, because I was convinced I was too dumb to understand it. This pattern followed me throughout my whole life. But while fear held me back from doing certain things, I had this outward persona of being an extrovert, a go-getter, and in some ways, kind of fearless. When I was eight-years-old, I saw an article in the local paper about a dance group made up of kids who performed all over Houston. I loved singing and dancing and begged my mom to let me audition. She agreed, and my audition was absolutely terrible, but as my mom told me years later, they let me in because they thought I had something special. When I was on stage, suddenly, the fear was gone. I was my authentic self when I was performing in front of an audience. I came alive. That led me to wanting to be a professional dancer. I was convinced that I would go to college and major in dance or musical theater and then pursue a career on Broadway. When I told this dream to my parents, it was not met with encouragement; instead it was met with “That’s not a very stable life, Celina” and “As a Christian, I cannot support a lifestyle where you would be working alongside gays.” That last one was courtesy of my mom. Even though I was prepared to struggle and live a life where I didn’t get a steady paycheck, and even though I did not have the same religious beliefs as my mother, my fear of upsetting and disappointing them contributed to me abandoning that dream. I convinced myself it was because I injured my knee at the end of my senior year, and that it would take me too long to rehab it, and by that time, I would be “old” according to the dance world (I would have been the ancient age of 20).
Another example of me appearing like I had no fear was when I was accepted into a masters program at University College London. I already had a Master of Fine Arts in Creative Writing, which I had convinced myself was useless because I wasn’t a good enough writer to teach it or have a career as an author. After I received that degree, I got a job at a small publishing company in Houston. We specialized in comic books, and while it was amazing fun, I didn’t really do anything. I was the Senior Editor, and I edited about two books a year. On the surface, it looked like a dream job, but after five years, my skills were getting rusty, so I figured, why not get a degree in publishing? Also, why not do it in London? At the time I was married. We didn’t have kids or a mortgage, so after lengthy discussions with my husband, I applied to the Masters in Publishing program at UCL, and I actually got in. I was supposed to begin in 2012, but I deferred my entrance to 2013 to save money. We moved in with my in-laws, and I worked two jobs to have enough of a cushion to begin my life in one of the most expensive cities in the world. I decided to move to London about a month before classes started to get settled and to try to find a part time job to help bring some money in while I earned my degree. The other part of the plan was for my husband to join me a few months later after securing a job of his own. While I was excited to be in London, I was also terrified. I was living in a different country by myself for the first time. Despite everyone speaking English, despite me having a nice, albeit tiny dorm room, and despite me living in one of the most exciting, culturally rich cities in the world, the fear gripped me hard. One night while my husband and I were Skyping, he dropped the bomb that he didn’t want to move to London. Instead of me figuring this out, instead of me saying, “Well, that’s too bad. Guess I’ll see you next year”, I went into a fear spiral. All I could think was “How am I going to do this without his help? How am I going to survive here on a part time job?” Of course, the fear won. And if I’m being brutally honest, I was scared that it would be the end of our marriage. By him not coming, he was giving me an ultimatum. I had to make a choice: my dream or our marriage. Our marriage had been rocky for years, and I was worried that a year of separation would create space for us to realize how broken our relationship truly was. It was more than I could handle. I packed my bags, lost thousands of dollars I had invested in moving to the UK and went back to Houston, tail between my legs, crying on the plane ride home. That was the beginning of the end, or so I thought.
If you are still reading this, bless you, but also, I hope that means you are identifying with most of what I am writing here. I’m not writing this just to be a diary entry to explore my issues with fear. I am writing this as a call to action for anyone who struggles with fear keeping them stuck and sad. Despite the fact that I let fear dictate my life for almost 40 years, something inside me shifted recently, causing me to choose myself, my love for myself, and the dream of a new life. Two years after I abandoned my dream of going to school in London, I broke through the fear of ending my 12 year marriage. Two years after that, I broke through the fear of leaving an abusive relationship and started the excruciating work of healing. Six months after that, I broke through the fear of starting a new career and became a high school English teacher, which has been one of the most rewarding experiences of my life. As I was trying to find my way through this demanding job, I started to look for ways to be more balanced and calm, which led me to embark on a journey of self-discovery, self-love, and the constant work of spiritual growth. This in itself is super scary. You have to have the courage to uncover the layers of gunk over your heart, and un-peel years of trauma in order to understand where toxic behavior patterns originate, and then do the work of pulling on that string little by little to unravel that seemingly protective cocoon in order to realize how much of that was actually holding you back. I am learning not to hate myself. I am learning to give myself grace. I am learning to set and hold boundaries. I have made tremendous progress, but one place I still need work, and probably always will, is pushing past my fears and the discomfort they cause in order to grow and fulfill my purpose. And this is the work I want to do. This is my purpose. I want to be the conduit to help others identify their fears and give them the tools to break through those walls of doubt, of imposter syndrome, of “But what if I can’t pay my bills?” and “What if my family/spouse/friends think I’m crazy?” I have all of these thoughts and more, which is why we are going to work on this together. We get one shot in this lifetime to make a difference, to make ourselves and others happy, to have a life that we love and that truly resonates with our soul. And remember, the goal isn’t to be fearless. Elizabeth Gilbert in her book Big Magic says, “If your goal in life is to be fearless, then I believe you are on the wrong path, because the only truly fearless people I’ve ever met were straight-up sociopaths and a few exceptionally reckless three-year-olds — and those aren’t good role models for anyone.” Amen to that! I think the work is to identify where our fears come from, recognize that they are trying to keep us safe, as they are biologically programmed to do, but then for us to say, “I see you. I hear you. Thank you for trying to protect me, but you do not control my life anymore.” This is my first step into making that a reality for myself. I hope you will join me. Fear doesn’t stand a chance when we don’t have to face it alone.