"What if” tastes like day old bread, stale and crusty and difficult to eat.
“What if” smells like laundry, overdue, sitting in a basket next to my bed so that when I wake up all I can smell is musty sweaty clothes from my children and me. Unpleasant at best.
“What if” sounds like a room of teenagers all talking at the same time with loud music blaring and phones ringing all at once. Chaotic, confusing and very anxiety provoking.
“What if” feels like ice: slippery, cold and when I fall on my bottom as I inevitably do, literally becomes “a pain in my ass.”
“What if” reminds me of sitting on the steps, watching the other kids happily playing some inane game I refused to play because I had played it a bajillion times with my older brothers, sister and all the other “bigger kids” on my street. I squirm in my seat and wonder why I have purposefully excluded myself, declared to all the other kids I don’t fit in.
“What if” looks like the way disappointment runs down my face when I get so close but not reaching the goal. It is falling down and breaking my leg steps away from the finishing line. It is running out of gas one exit away from where the party is rocking and rolling without me. It is my submission I spent weeks on getting lost in the mail and arriving the day after the deadline.
To sum it up, it is not a good feeling.
I am happier and more fulfilled when I follow through with my risks, even if they seem absurd. At least I will know I tried.
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© 2013 by Julie Jordan Scott
This post was inspired by a prompt at BlogHer's