Change can be scary. Trust me, I know.
I’m quite possibly the biggest pack rat you will ever meet. From movie ticket stubs to foreign currency to maps and brochures of places I’ve been, I just don’t have the heart to throw anything away that was at once important to me.
This may seem like no big deal to you, or it could sound like the newest episode of Hoarders. Either way, let’s talk about this for a second.
Change is probably one of my biggest fears and it appears in so many different situations. We’ll start with the small scale of holding on to mementos and souvenirs. To me, everything that comes from a trip or a fun adventure becomes a souvenir. Have I ever sat and looked through this old stuff or used it for anything? No. But it’s that feeling that the second you throw it away you’ll suddenly get this urge to begin scrapbooking, as if it’s that simple. So instead, I just fill shoeboxes full of things that collect dust. This fear of change comes in the form of nostalgia, simply in the physical sense.
The more emotional side of nostalgia comes during long stays in a certain place or with certain people. I tend to very quickly grow attached to people or places, which makes leaving exceedingly different. A great (and slightly embarrassing) example of this in my life came during the summer before college. I’ve always been close to my parents, to the point that leaving them to go to school terrified me. The idea that I may never live with them for an extended period of time kept me up every night for those three months after graduation. While everyone else seemed to be overly excited for their new adventure, I was having a hard time honing in on that excitement. I knew it was there somewhere, but it was hidden behind that fear of change. Of course, everything changes once you actually head off to school and get settled into your life and, as a senior in college, I can say that I’ve adjusted fully to this idea of being an “adult”. I was just so used to my life at home that I knew I would miss everything that I had become accustomed to.
It’s just as easy to get attached to an item, whether it be something from your childhood or something from a long lost lover. It’s not as easy to just throw it away as everyone else seems to think it is. An item can hold memories for you and sometimes it’s just hard to let them go.
The final type of change, that tends to be the toughest for me, is when either you or a loved one leaves for an extended period of time. In the coming days, someone special in my life will be leaving the country for 23 days (yes, I’ve already begin the countdown). This wouldn’t be such a tough thing for me if this wasn’t someone I spent every single day with. The idea of this person being, for the most part, out of touch, and not even in the same country is hard to think about, though I’m filled with excited for his adventure. I’ve just grown so accustomed to him being around that it’ll take at least a week to adjust to a situation far outside our norm. I don’t know that this is one that will ever really get easier for me and I’m okay with that. This just means that I care enough to miss their presence in my life, and I wouldn’t want it any other way.
Bottom line is this: it’s perfectly okay to fear change – just don’t let that fear slow you down.
Grab fear by the horns and face change head on. Find a new normal when your old one becomes obsolete. You may find this new one is even greater than you imagined.
Change is good.
Facing Fearless 