Fear is a road leading to boringville

About five years ago, a boyfriend told me that I put too much on my blog. "Too much" basically meaning I was being too honest and open. Thankfully, that boyfriend has been an ex for awhile, but I have had a hard time since then really just being open at the level I was before without discomfort. That boyfriend would also email me news stories about crimes committed in my area to prove to me that it wasn't safe for me to be going out at night. 

Remember, I live with a unique type of family, to give you an idea of what I mean: I walked into the laundry room to find two strange men washing their clothes and wasn't surprised. When I asked my dad who those men were, he said they were homeless and came back too late to get into the shelter (and would be spending the night.) Most of the people people were afraid of were at our house for supper on Sundays. Basically, has family has always lived with less fear than even is necessary at times. 

I said all that to say that I'm going back to the old me blogger. The one who didn't care about a lot of readers, but also didn't fear putting myself out there either. You know that movie "Me Before You"? It was one movie that I could watch a few more times, I cried in the theater. ANYWAY, the author of the book that movie was based on wrote another book that I'm reading now. It is called Paris For One (author is Jojo Moyes) and it's about a girl who never does anything without weighing the pros and cons. She is sensible, if sensible is the keyword for fearful. Then her worst nightmare happened, and her trip to Paris didn't go as planned. Through all the "mishaps" she learned to embrace the unknown! 

Do you know that I went to the post office on Valentines Day (looking a mess after a visit to the gym) and a guy standing near me packaging up his mail started a conversation and asked if I had a boyfriend for Valentines Day. I thought of how I probably looked, and was so embarrassed that I cut the conversation short so that he wouldn't ask for my number because I was sure it would be out of pity. Isn't that sad? I kept going back to it later in my mind, and realized that my fear of what he thought was almost surely worse than what he actually saw. And what if he had thought I looked at mess? Who cares? I don't even know him! I'm not traveling the road of fear to Boringville, my life is meant to be so much more than that.