First time: A story about daring.

Almost always, the most wonderful things are made by small people in small places who, trembling with fear down to their very marrow, decide to step out of their own patterns and choose, with great courage, to make brave decisions.

Story of the inner child.

Yesterday, for the first time, I read something of my own out loud in front of more than 4 people, and the challenging part wasn’t reading something I had written, but doing it in front of 50 people, with a huge spotlight in my face, a homemade stage, and a bunch of people in silence waiting for what was going to happen.

The hardest part wasn’t reading, but going up.

A few minutes before my turn came, I looked at the person I had told I was going to read and made a clear and simple gesture: I put my hand perpendicular right at the height of my neck and started moving it several times as if I wanted to slit it once and for all. And it’s not that I wanted that—what I actually wanted was to go up front and share what I had prepared—but I was so fucking scared and my legs were shaking so much that the best idea I could come up with to get through the situation was to cancel everything.

—I’m getting down— I told her through mime so the rest of the compañerxs wouldn’t hear, and then I added another key sign— I brought the index fingers of both hands together and rolled them in circles against each other, while making the “next one” gesture and shaking my head with the universal sign we all know as “no,” just in case any of the previous signs hadn’t been clear enough.

The girl— wise— made a cruel but accurate decision: she went up front herself and said, laughing, that there was someone who didn’t want to go up to read, but that it couldn’t be that way, because we had already committed…

—Son of a bitch— I thought. No one had noticed that it was me who didn’t want to go up (I think several of us felt identified). No one had noticed, except me, and that was already enough.

My mind was shaking, and I was shaking with it. I was truly afraid I wouldn’t be able to stand up because of how terrified I was, or that my voice wouldn’t come out, or that I’d have to ask someone else to read it for me because I couldn’t do it, or that I’d cry, or hide in the bathroom, or run away. There were many possible scenarios, but none of them were good. So I timidly thought of proposing to read the text from where I was sitting, hiding among the shadows and the knees of my compañerxs, and thus avoid the front and especially the spotlight, which were the things that scared me the most.

The problem was that what I was going to share wasn’t just any text, because if it had been a random text I was so scared that I would undoubtedly have chosen any of the options above. But I was going to read a text that talked about courage and about being brave, a strong text, with too much presence— at least for me— that somehow speaks about who I am and about something that runs through me. I couldn’t behave like a scared child reading from the shadows— actually yes, I could, we always can— but in this case that would mean betraying my own words, and that was something I couldn’t allow myself. Not out of pride, but because I believe in them too much.

So I went up. In reality there was no stage, so I didn’t go up anywhere; I just stood under that light and in front of those 50 people watching. For someone who has stage fright and doesn’t feel comfortable being the center of attention, I was standing in front of Madison Square Garden. Yes, that important we think we are…

I don’t remember if I could barely say my name. I had prepared a beautiful introduction for my text, because the reading had an intention, because it truly deserved it, and because I wanted to explain from what place I was saying what I was saying. I was so scared that the only thing I managed to do was stand up and focus on reading the lines I had written down, because those lines were more important than everything else, even more than my terrible stage fright.

I took several breaths, which weren’t really sighs, they were gulps of air so I wouldn’t drown, like when a fish is taken out of the water, because that’s exactly how it felt. While my upper lip trembled in an intermittent and intense way like I think I had never felt before, I started to read. My voice was strong, determined, and firm. I knew well what I was saying, I believed in it more than in my life, more than in my body, so with trembling lips but once again disguising myself as brave, I spoke about bravery.

People applauded and in the end it felt beautiful, but the biggest and most valuable applause was my own toward myself, because I was the one who knew best everything I was facing internally just to take those three shitty steps and sit at the front for 5 minutes. Surely people didn’t notice any of what I’m telling here, because even though we feel like the center of the scene, we are just one tiny, insignificant element in someone else’s field.

—How brave you look, trembling with fear and still daring to do it— a mate told me.

And despite not having done everything I had planned to do, when I “went down” I felt like I had won, because I had done one of the things that scare me the most in life: going up front.

MORAL

Don’t believe your mind when it makes you overthink right before taking the most accurate step of your life. Because it might be there, in those three seconds when you decide whether to stand up and do it or flee and run away, that the most important act of your existence is at stake.

Almost always, the most wonderful things are made by small people in small places who, trembling with fear down to the very marrow, decide to step out of their own patterns and choose, with great courage, to make brave decisions.

For all of us who,

trembling with fear,take our own path.

Here is the text in question,

now you know, one of my favorites ♡

The Insurgents

They tried to put us in boxes of every possible shape and size. From every century, with different names and different mottos, with different flags and justifications.

They called us witches, heretics, mad, sick, outcasts, bohemians, weird.

We were exiled and socially ostracized, in the name of God, the church, progress, family, binary thinking, heterosexuality, profession, monogamy, and the future.

They told us how things should be done, and we believed and accepted for a long time, and we did our best to fit into those shitty boxes, tight, cold, thin, with no room for pluralism or possibilities.

But one day times changed, and another moment arrived where some boxes began to disintegrate from their age, like under their own weight but also from the force of oppression exerted from within.

And from their corners new paths formed, and paradoxically, the boxes began to come apart.

Cracks were freed, spaces where light entered and where one could also look outward, toward the hitherto unknown.

And those beings began to realize that they no longer fit inside, and they simply began to escape, they no longer fit in there. It was almost natural...

But still they had to fight for it, because from the outside they were still condemned. But why? they wondered, i f it was something natural. They couldn't do anything else...

And so they fought and so they continued.

And other uncertainties arose, other ideas and new questions. And others appeared, who not only didn’t fit into a single box but who, strangely, felt they belonged to many.

And they suffered too, and they wanted not to, but they couldn’t do anything else. It was something natural...

And like those before them, they fought, a lot, until they understood that the path was not to fit in but to create one’s own that includes them and to find themselves in it.

And so they encouraged and motivated each other, formed tribes, created new spaces.

And with that fear of feeling like heretics without boxes or names or labels they went out into the world to call themselves "nobody," to create other worlds, other life options,new stories.

And they seemed brave, and definitely they were.

And more boxes were broken, more windows and more void holes appeared where new things could fit and where they could look outward.

And little by little many more saw it, and more understood and more were encouraged and more broke them and more left.

Until they no longer sought to fit into those old yellowed boxes, moth-eaten shittyboxes, they realized they were more outside than inside.

The boxes were still there, yes, but in their souls they had almost disappeared...

And they had to keep explaining to the old world of mental memories, and worse yet, many times to themselves,

because getting out is easy but staying requires wisdom and also solitude.

But when one decides to open the eyes, it becomes hard to play dumb about that.

You can’t stop being brave, when you always were. Even before you knew it ♡

With Love

Aye.