I Just Want to (See You) Be Brave

I am usually a pretty cautious person. I look both ways a few times before I turn left. I consider the consequences of doing something before I do it. I think way too much. In an episode of How I Met Your Mother Barney tells Ted to stop thinking and to start doing. Of course, he meant it in a perverted way, but the point is still valid. Maybe that's not being brave. Maybe you have to think about it. Maybe you have to consider not doing it. Maybe being brave is thinking that you can't do it, and then doing it anyway. Maybe doing instead of thinking isn't brave but fearless.

Still, I think sometimes I'd be better off if I could do rather than think. But I'm not brave enough to do. I'm not even brave enough to say what I want to say. I can't stop thinking about what would happen. What if they laugh at me? What if they say no? What if he rejects me?

Sometimes I think of life in terms of old high school movies. A particular scene comes to mind from Never Been Kissed. Josie is asked to the prom by the most popular guy in school, only it turns out to have been a joke. So she's waiting on the porch for her date, and he drives up in a limo. But the limo doesn't stop. Instead his date pops up beside him out of the moon roof and they laugh and throw raw eggs at her.

Now, I don't think this will ever happen to me (are people so cruel in real life?), but I can't help worrying that I will misunderstand a situation and act based on that, only to be burned for it.

As you may have gathered from my last post, I don't have a lot of experience with guys liking me back. Except maybe they have. See, according to others, I don't give myself enough credit. Whatever, nobody does. But that makes me wonder, what if I've been so afraid of misreading his signs that I've misread his signs? What I mean to say is that I am so uncertain in my own appeal that I may be rejecting the idea of a guy liking me for no other reason than I'm not sure why he would.

Okay, side note, I was informed the other day that somebody else I know reads this. (Yay! But...) I'm supposed to be more careful about what I post now, because maybe I don't want people I know to know all of this about me. What I just said sounds a little pity-party and insecure. Maybe even a little bit fishing-for-compliments. But, for those people, I don't mean this in a down on myself kind of way. It doesn't make me sad. If you like me, I don't have to know the reason. I'm just saying that not knowing the reasons impacts my thinking about your liking. End of side note.

I am afraid to decide to be brave and act regardless of my understanding of the situation. And that's kind of what I need to do now. Maybe not need, but want so that I don't have to be so afraid anymore.

I started this thinking about doing something. Not without thinking, but in spite of what I'm thinking. I'd like to be brave. I want to do this.

But I probably won't. I'm not brave enough.

Brave--Sara Bareilles