Libby is one of our young writers. She is afraid of lots of things. But she’s not afraid of curse words. Just a heads up… 😊😊😊

You know what? I’m fucking terrified. All of the time.

In this article I’m going to be telling you all my own hot take on fear and bravery, exciting stuff am I right? So let’s just jump right in, I’m going to tell you some of my deepest and darkest fears.

Okay so, I’m terrified that I’ll end up homeless. I’m terrified that I’ll pick the wrong college course and be miserable or unemployed for the rest of my life. I’m terrified that I’ll never be in a relationship and I’ll die alone. I’m terrified that I’ll fuck up and lose all of the great people in my life.

I’m terrified of the fact that I write poetry instead of short stories because stories are easier to publish.

I’m terrified of the future. Sheesh.

As I said before, I’m terrified all of the fucking time. Now call me crazy (you’d be well within your rights to) but I don’t think my fears are too crazy. In fact, I think you have at least one of the fears that I wrote about up there. Yes you, the reader. And you know what? If you do have any of those fears or any of your own and you still get up each morning, you are incredibly brave.

A common misconception: bravery is synonymous with fearlessness. This is not the case. In fact being brave is the opposite of being fearless. For example, let’s say you love spiders, absolutely adore the little shits. Now let’s say a spider comes into your living room and your mam loses her shit (she’s terrified of them). If you pick up that spider and put it outside, you’re not being brave at all, you’re actually having a nice time for yourself.

Now let’s say your mam is home alone and there’s a spider in the living room, if your mam picks up that spider she has balls bigger than your dad. Because she did something that terrified her. Being brave means having the shit scared out of you but doing the thing anyway. It’s easy for confident people to go up to large groups and make conversation but the people I have real respect for are those who are incredibly anxious but they go out of their way to talk to others. That takes real courage.

So the way I look at it is that if you’re scared all of the time, of everything, then you’re the bravest little fucker around. Because you’re facing your fears and you’re not letting them control you. Well done! So how about we all stop being so judgy hm? Because some of us *cough* me *cough* are sometimes even scared to get out of bed because school is such a scary place and guess what? We get up and go anyway and those people deserve medals.

So don’t be ashamed of your fears. They make you honourable and courageous.