A Perfect Surrender

Breaking free from self imposed limitations — my ‘Medium’ debut

Talk about looking for something that doesn’t exist! It’s the light of a new dawn, and I have been going through all my prose, scratched into existence in worn-out, torn-out journals. I believe I am searching for my self-worth, my first piece of clever genius, to share with an awe inspiring, intellectual, super highway of information exchange–but nothing comes up ‘trumps’.

My frightened, inner-child is wanting to show the adults of the Medium world I belong here, alongside the genius in each of you, in this shared story-telling space. Several hours later, however, zippo… nada… nothing has passed the self-imposed, perfection test.

Staring at my blank white screen; the one on my computer and the one between my eyes, I wonder, how many other writers, when starting out, have sat in this lonely space of fearful vulnerability, frozen in time? The initial burst of enthusiasm and courage waning as the familiar face of imposter-syndrome grasps a cruel, strong-hold around the belly of my heart; now a damp fog of failure settling in its place.

As I surrender to the possibility that nothing is good enough, I am not good enough, I’m transported to a moment from yesteryear, as a forgotten memory-glitch flits across the computer-screen of my mind.

It’s the first day of the first year of high-school. I’m with unfamiliar faces, squeezed like frightened soldiers, logistically organised in tombstone rows. We’re all seated in worn-out matching desk and chairs. That foreboding fog has yet again settled in with the caution, ‘I don’t belong here in this creative space’, stirring up the butterflies that barely survive on high alert in my anxiety-ridden belly. I massage and self-soothe my worry, praying that the cyclonic wind within will not tear apart my fragile wings.

My hands are fused to the steel frame of the chair, white knuckles disabling my fight or flight instinct from kicking in.

A tall, pink safari suit and a frog-green beret, tilted with precision on a mop of grease, marches down the rod-straight aisles, leaving a trail of sweaty perfume.

Man, it’s stifling hot in here! I stare out at freedom, barely visible through…

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