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This story is not so much for you as it is for me. Sorry. If you don’t like it, don’t read it. Sometimes I can be pretty selfish like that. And sometimes… sometimes we just need to be our own cheerleaders. I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but recently life seems to be pretty damn tough, if not totally overwhelming. Taking steps forward in the world right now can seem… what for? You’re only going to get knocked backwards or sideways or off your feet or flat on your face or into a crying mess. That is the way I am feeling these days and taking a step forward is the very last thing I want to do or am even able to do. I want to run away. I want to hide. I don’t want to show up.

But that’s the thing. This world, right NOW, needs me to step forward. It needs me to show up and make a difference. I don’t want to look back on this moment and think, “If only…” I share this story today because I think there is A LOT of fear that we ALL face in the world today. First, fear is a natural defense mechanism developed to help us stay alive. Second, I got you. Whatever it is, I support you. Just take one step forward, and then another.

I don’t really believe in regret, because I think every moment I have experienced in this life has been necessary to make me the person I am today, and the person I am today is exactly who I am supposed to be. That works out nicely. But if I did believe in regret, I might look back on this particular day and wish that things had been different.

This has been my reality for at least 30 years. I just quit another job before it started. I want to curl up into a little ball underneath the covers, in a world made of black, darkness, nothingness, and simply disappear. Why do I do this? Why can’t I just be normal? Just go to a job, do some work, get paid, and be happy. So simple, and yet, so unattainable for the majority of my life.

When I was 16 years old, my father told me to get a job. I wanted to get a job. I had every intention of getting a job. I even knew where. I was going to get a job at Target, stocking shelves, getting paid, and being a happy 16 year old. But I wasn’t, and I didn’t. All I had to do was walk into Target and ask for an application, fill it out, and return it to the store. It was so easy and I was guaranteed a position, if only I had filled out the application. I did not, but I told my parents that I did. Weeks passed and my father asked me about my job search. I confidently lied to my father that I had gotten a position at Target stocking shelves. He was pleased. “Great, son. When do you start?” Never.

The day finally came when I was supposed to start my new job as a stocker at Target. I was going to work on the weekends and a couple nights during the week from 5:00 pm – 9:30 pm or so. My father was very proud of me. For three weeks, I would park the Van of Distinction in the parking lot at Target while I was supposed to be working and I would walk around to the back of the building, to the freeway underpass that had been built for drainage, and just sit there. I had nowhere else to go. I could not go into Target because what if my parents showed up? I could not drive anywhere because I was lucky enough to drive a totally customized conversion van that was painted in a very unique, and extremely recognizable, red-maroon color and had the word DISTINCTION written loudly across both side panels. That vehicle was commonly known throughout my home town as the Van of Distinction for good reason. I was stuck, literally, in a highway drainage underpass, for hours at a time, with more and more negative thoughts that had nowhere to go but deep into my soul.

“What the hell is wrong with me?” “Just go in the fucking store and get a job, shithead!” “Dad is going to beat the crap out of you when he finds out. And he WILL find out!” (My father never beat me. We did receive spankings though and that was more than enough) “Why are you so weird?” “Just be like everyone else.” “Be normal!”

I couldn’t then. I can not now. I will not in the future. It is just not possible, but that doesn’t mean I don’t try.

I did go into that Target. I didn’t ever fill out an application.

To this day, even as a 46 year old man, I am terrified, almost debilitatingly so, to fill out an application for a job. Just one fear of so many. I imagine I am not the only person in this world who experiences this terror. If only it weren’t so…but it is. Right now, I am filling out applications. Not my favorite, but there are steps forward…