On Bravery (Or, More Accurately, Fear)

             The other day, the lovely Gina posted a quote on Facebook that really stuck with me.

"What if you woke up today with only the things you thanked God for yesterday?"

          What if, indeed. Religion is a pretty conflicted topic for me, but I do believe in God, and I also know I can be a fantastically ungrateful person. I spend so much time dwelling on the negative things happening in my life sometimes that I don't stop to appreciate the good. I'm trying to work on this, but unfortunately, it's never as easy as a quick decision.
            People I know keep telling me, for example, how brave it is that I decided to give living in Boston a six week shot. But it doesn't feel brave to me. Now, nobody said bravery comes without fear -- in fact, these people argued that point pretty well:

"Courage is resistance to fear, mastery of fear, not absence of fear." 

- Mark Twain

“Bran thought about it. 'Can a man still be brave if he's afraid?' 

'That is the only time a man can be brave,' his father told him.” 

― George R.R. Martin, A Game of Thrones

“Before I knew you, I thought brave was not being afraid. You've taught me that bravery is being terrified and doing it anyway.” 

― Laurell K. Hamilton, Blood Noir 

          And, really, who am I to argue with these (published!) people? But I thought bravery should at least come with some kind of confidence. Aren't people who take risks supposed to have at least deluded themselves that there's a chance they'll succeed? If I were brave, wouldn't I feel excited right now, a calmness, or some sense that this is right?
           What is bravery, anyway? How do I get some of it? Is bravery feeling like you're out of options, like you're so scared of becoming everything you see around you that all you can do is run? Is bravery slipping out of Pittsburgh's back door into a city you've claimed to love since you were in high school but now feel a sort of gurgling fear of every time you consider that you aren't going home? It doesn't feel brave.
          Actually, I've never felt brave. It's not really a word I use in my vocabulary; it's an ideal I associate most with epic tales or soldiers or people who seek out some sort of justice to correct a moral or legal wrongdoing.
          That said, I've often wondered what it might feel like to be brave. I imagine it involves some sort of meeting things head-on, an active drive or ability to push yourself. I don't push myself. I duck and cover, tuck my head down and wait for a moment of quiet when I can slip in. I like it when people give me instructions -- not orders, but how-to's. I like to put my head down and just do until it's all over. Even though I know I'll feel helpless when I'm not racing to the end of something.
          I have anxiety, or had anxiety, depending on which of my therapists you ask. My most recent psychologist, an assertive, grey-haired Republican who intimidated me, would insist that I say "had."
          "We can fix that," he said, when I called him from my mom's kitchen some afternoon last summer. His voice was clipped, confident. Certain, but dismissive at the same time. Anxiety was Tuesday to this guy.
          Still, I had no other options, really. No one else was taking new patients, at least not anyone who wouldn't push medication on me, and I've always been a strong believer that I'm the only person who can fix me. So that rules medication out. I'd spent the night previous laying on my back on the floor of my empty apartment, staring at the ceiling, watching the fan blades cut through the heavy summer air, and having no idea what to do. Those are the moments that scare me the most: those times, at the start or end of a day, when I have no plan, when daylight is shifting but I'm suddenly utterly certain that I'm completely alone.
          I used to love and look forward to alone time. I still do, I guess, but only pseudo-aloneness -- the quiet chance to breathe amidst a storm of chaos. It's when I feel like the world is empty that the anxiety creeps in. I would never survive a zombie apocalypse. I wouldn't even want to.
          People around me are much more confident in me than I am. Most of the time, I feel like a great pretender. I fall into things, I don't make them happen. Someday, somebody is going to catch on. And I'll be there with a sarcastic crack and an eye-roll, just so you all know I knew it all along. I might fool other people, but I don't fool myself.
           So, Ms. Anxiety, why move to a city where you only know a few people, none of them closely, without a job or tangible reason to be there?
          The long answer is this: it's felt like something I wanted for such a long time that when a reasonable time and means of doing it came up, I just had to. This is crazy hard, emotionally taxing, and so stressful that I wake up convinced I've made a mistake every morning. But I'm doing it anyway, for myself, and nobody else.
           I know a lot of bitter people. So many people I went to school with are married, have kids, houses, divorces, and no dreams of getting out or ambition to make those dreams happen. And that's okay, because that works for them. But it seems so impossible to me. I don't know that I'll ever have one big dream, but I have a lot of small ones. Maybe they won't pan out, but no one can say I never tried, or that I sat around while life just happened to me, while I blamed everyone else for my own unhappiness and tried to take everyone else down with me.
          I run away from myself every day. I have to stop doing that. I have to get to know myself, stop letting other people tell me who I am or should be. I can't do that in Pittsburgh.
          The short answer? Oh, yeah. I have no effing idea what I'm doing here.
         
           But I guess I'll find out.

            Oh -- and this:

I hate my car... until I have to get rid of it.

For some reason, I've been feeling strangely attached to my car this week.

This probably sounds pretty normal, except that all I do is bitch about my car. Like, all of the time. But like pretty much everything else, I never feel more attached to something until I have to get rid of it. Actually, I've come to learn that the more I complain about something, the more I probably care about it, otherwise I wouldn't waste the time. So for part one of this next series of "Holy shit I'm moving to Boston and I have no idea why I decided to do that or what I'm going to do when I get there" posts, here are five reasons I've secretly loved my car this whole time and why I'll be sad to give it to my grandparents.

1. My car is my only big, independent purchase. 

I mean, okay, I had a tiny bit of help, but I was the primary purchaser. I bought my Chevy Malibu in 2010, and at first I wasn't too sure about it. I spent one day car shopping with my parents, only to end up buying from Century III Chevrolet in West Mifflin -- which, for anyone considering a car purchase, is the absolute worst car dealership of all time. It had 76,000 miles on it. It used to be a rental car. It had old people magnifying glasses on the window and stains on the back upholstery.

But it also had power locks and windows, a ton of trunk space, and, most importantly, it moved. I was 20 when I bought it, the first thing I ever bought that mattered. Over time, I started to forget what that felt like, but now I'm back at square one. I own nothing again. It's kind of a weird feeling.

2. I'm an emotional driver. 


This is probably... no, this is definitely a terrible thing. But I've spent my entire life learning how to not be emotional in public, and cars have always felt like a safe, private space to me. Ever since I was little, if I could sleep nowhere else, I could sleep in a car. The same goes with feelings.

When I was 21 and going through probably the first really tangible emotional crisis I'd ever been through, during the summer when I was staying at home with my parents and sometimes felt like I had nowhere to go and just deal with it for a minute, I discovered the advantages of a good car cry. I've been a terrible cliche. I have cried in my car, in the rain, in a Giant Eagle parking lot. I do the majority of my crying in cars. Not only can few people really see you, but no one is looking. 


When I get really anxious or angry, I like to just go on a good long drive. Sometimes I wonder if the TSA keeps an eye out for me, after all of the random passes through the airport I've made. I'm going to have to find a new place to hide my emotional crises.

3. I have a car personality. 


Behind the wheel, I am a badass. This is not to say I'm an aggressive driver (not outright, anyway), but the more assertive parts of my personality come out when I'm driving.

Outside of the car, I keep insults to under-the-breath-murmurs. I don't yell at people unless seriously provoked, and then I feel guilty about it forever.

In the car, I flip people off and yell things like "Yeah, your mother, bitch" with the windows down. I'm not saying it's great. I'm just saying I'm going to miss my car personality.

4. I won't be able to sing anymore. 


I only sing in the car. I'm a horrible singer, but, when considering the "safe space" a car becomes for me, I am free to belt it out at ear-splitting, note-murdering volume with no one around to hear me.

I refuse to inflict this suffering on other people. In fact, the mere presence of other people hinders my physical ability to hit notes at any volume above a whisper. This is a blessing. But I'm going to miss singing all the same.

5. There are places I genuinely won't be able to get to. 


I am not a person who goes on adventures alone, typically. I don't need to go on adventures alone in Pittsburgh. I automatically come with the "I'm from here, why would I go there/do that" excuse, so I've never had to really push myself. But every once in awhile, I just want to drive out to the middle of nowhere for the sake of it.

That, actually, is probably what I'll miss the most. The slightly cliche freedom that comes with having a car. I'll have one again at some point. Maybe in a year, maybe in five years. But whenever I do get one, I know this: I'm going to feel like I'm sixteen all over again.