Brain Barf #1

Before we start I suppose I should explain what a brain barf is.
It's not a novel concept. People call them all sorts of things, from brain drain to just simple writing exercises. Basically, it's just me, writing about whatever I happen to be thinking about at the time. It could be just some random thoughts, it could be a story, it might even be a little paragraph that makes no sense at all...
The point of a brain barf is just to let myself write without worrying about quality or plot, or even coherency. It has been through little editing, aside from basic spelling and grammar, so what you're seeing here is essentially my naked thoughts, without censor, without edit.
So, here's brain barf number one.
~*~*~

I don't know what I'm doing here. I don't feel like writing. I'm pretty sure I'm only doing it to fill the silence, so I don't have to talk to my dad.

I know he's ashamed of me. He's over there wondering what I'll ever amount to. He's over there wondering if I'll ever accomplish anything worthwhile.

Or maybe I'm just putting my own thoughts into his head.

But, in any case, perhaps this will be a good exercise for me, to write when I don't want to. I haven't done a good brain barf in a long long time...

For some reason I have gotten into this ridiculous mentality that everything I write must be high quality or I shouldn't even bother to start. It's been causing all sorts of problems, mainly with the fact that you can't just pick at a few keys or scribble a few words and just spin a flawless piece of writing.
Why do I expect myself to?

I just hate looking at bad work. I hate looking at something and knowing it's another failure, another bad idea, another badly written piece of scrap paper. I feel the same about my drawings, about anything really. Maybe that's why I often have a hard time working, getting things done. I'm so scared of it being sub par, of being less than perfect, that I would rather just not create it at all.

Why am I so terrified of making mistakes? Why is it that the very thought of doing something wrong is so stressful, so utterly abhorrent that I would avoid those very things that make me happy in order to evade it?

I suspect it is for the same reason that I do not ask for help, even as I am drowning.

It's because I don't want others to see. I don't want them to know that I'm flawed. I have spent so much effort to build this robotic outer shell, smooth and perfect, to fool others into believing that I am exactly as I appear.

Unshakable, unbreakable, impervious.

Why?

I am here to make mistakes. Everyone else makes mistakes. It's not wrong to make a mistake, it's only wrong to refuse to correct it.

Why must it always be me against the world, isolated in my own mission to create a pretty glass compartment for myself, so people can pass by, ooh and awe, but I remain forever trapped inside. Perfect, unmarked, beautiful... But untouched is untouched, body and soul. I have learned nothing.

I understand these things. All of them. And yet... I cannot manage to break free of my inhibitions.

Often I dream of standing, climbing high so everyone can see me, and dancing. Dancing without end, my feet hardly touching the ground. It would not matter if the dance was beautiful, rhythmic, or even put to music. It could be the worst dance of all history, as geeky and awful as they come...

But it would be my dance. My dance. Not a dance built to impress, nor one painted to make me seem pretty. Just a dance to be all my own and no one else's. Someday I will find that dance. I will find it and I will dance it until there is no one in the world that hasn't seen. I'll shout my stories from the tops of my vocals, the good, the bad, the cliché and trite. I will scream them and dance and dance and dance...

There will be no one who does not know of my dance.

And I will not be ashamed. I will show the world my face, tell them that I am the dancer, and I will accept it with glee, the simple credit of creation being far more than enough to make up for the nay sayers.

Their jeers will not reach my ears. Their rants, their screams, their laughter, will be far far away, past my reach of caring.

And in that moment, that one single moment, as my feet fly freely on the air, and my arms sway wildly through the clouds, and my heart swings free of its strings... It is in that moment that I will truly be myself.