anxiety fairy

I wish I had a fairy godmother. Do you ever wish that? You know, someone cool but approachable, whose opinion I’ll trust blindly, who will seem to have all the answers. Someone who will shut down my insecurities, whatever they are. “Keep writing, people will want to read your book,” “Yes, you really are queer, it doesn't matter that you like guys too,” “No, you shouldn’t dump them, give it time, no relationship’s perfect.”

What I got instead is a little anxiety fairy who’s having way too much fun with these questions. And I feel fucking ripped off.

For instance, right now, I honestly do not know what I'm doing, which my fairy loves. She makes me question whether I’m in the right city, whether I have the right community, whether I even have the right talent. And then she tells me the answers lie in the number of people who double-tap their screen.

What a shitty metric that is.

So, I can’t help but wish the incessant rubbing of my fingers on my keyboard would summon a genie. I’d use a couple of wishes on the classics - end all wars and all forms of discrimination everywhere forever - and I’d spend the last one on a better fairy. One unbiased who’ll tell me that my words matter or will one day, not out of pity or encouragement, just because it’s true.

Alas, I rub and I write but no genie comes out. So I make it up as I go.

I rely on this tingly feeling that somehow sharing what I write, what I’ve been writing since I learned how to hold a pen, makes sense. I rely on the knowledge that I have gained more clarity in the past two months, than in the previous seven years of working my ass off 50 hours a week. I rely on the handful of sincere interactions: the stranger who told me he related to my coming-out story because he just went through a similar one; the friend from a decade ago who’s cheering me on even though we hadn’t really spoken in a few years; the girl I met on a dating app but never in real life who tells me she finds my writing relatable.

These feelings, these interactions, those are facts even my mind can’t deny. I may not have a fairy godmother to tell me whether writing can feed both my dreams and my stomach down the road. But, most days, these facts make me strong enough to tell the fairy I’m stuck with to shut.

the fuck.

up.

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