When the topic of the showcase first came up, I quickly told myself that I couldn’t do it. I had a myriad of reasons why. “I don’t have time”, “I have nothing I could write about”, “Mercury is in retrograde and my writing prowess is diminishing by the second.” I fully believed each and every reason because I had to. It was an easy out. I didn’t make those excuses because I was lazy or had too much on my plate, I made them because I was scared.  Scared isn’t the right word for it, more like terrified. I didn’t/couldn’t admit that to myself though because the only thing more harmful than the fear was the sting my pride would get whenever that thought popped into my head. To clarify what I was afraid of is a difficult task. My fears intersected and wove together so tightly it was difficult to tell them apart. Now that we are past the event, I’ve been able to do some introspection to find out what was happening in my brain at the time.

First there was my fear of quality failure. While I was scared about embarrassing myself, I was even more scared of letting myself down by delivering a subpar performance. To me, it is much better to fail after giving it your all then to pass after giving it your some. Let me elaborate further. Think about the question, “What does it mean to fail?” For me, the answer is simple, to fail is to remain stagnant. How are we supposed to grow as people, if we never allow ourselves to reach our full potential? I knew that this project would need every ounce of effort that I give, thus I was intimidated by it. I was scared of not giving it the time it deserved and ruining the quality of it.

My next fear was more a fear of not doing my community justice. Being a person who immigrated with his family to this country and also suffers from mental illness, I felt a greater responsibility to accurately portray every angle on the topic. I had my experience of course but does that make me an expert on all things mental health? Does my relationship with my parents give me an understanding of all children of immigrants? The answer is no to both of those questions and that was very stressful for me. I wanted to get the perspectives of as many people as I could but I also wanted to keep things nice and concise. 

While I had more fears, the last fear I’d like to talk about is my fear of presenting with my fellow peers. To put it in plain terms we can call it my immense insecurity. For me, especially in academic communities, I have this massive feeling of not belonging there. I look at my fellow students and am in awe of each and every single one of them but then that awe turns into pure shame in myself because I feel that I will never be on their level. I felt this fear throughout not only making my presentation but also while I was watching my colleagues present their projects. To make matters worse,  I then felt shame for feeling shame. I was stuck in an Ouroboros effect. 

While these fears were definitely harming more than helping, I am so happy and proud that I pushed through! I was able to prove to myself that I am capable of moving through adversity. That my fears and insecurities don’t control me. I gave my project my all, I spoke for those who felt voiceless, and I pushed past my insecurities and let myself truly be part of the group and celebrate our accomplishments together. I unfortunately can’t tell you that I’ve conquered these fears completely. These are thoughts and feelings I have had my whole life. While I can’t be forever rid of them, (that was never the goal for me) my goal was always to push myself further to the point where I can disregard them. While I was making things much harder for myself, the only reason that I was able to make it through was that I still loved myself and never stopped. It was through that love that I had patience and through that patience, I was able to forgive myself for having those thoughts. 

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