Fear Lies: Say It. Do It. Be It. | 4.6.25

No “we” without the risk

I will risk this sounding like nothing short of a Tony Robbins’ infomercial today. I will lay it on the line and wager that I’ll sound silly, that some may accuse me of being preachy or that I’m selling something. To that I say, I am (silly) and I am not (selling something) and hope you’ll believe me.

Last week I celebrated the insane 13th anniversary of the very first Typewriter Series poem, Typewriter Series #1, and I closed that essay with the declaration of a simple plea to you all. Today, I’m going a step further, because it dawned on me whilst writing that Signal Fire, I believe in what I was pleading for with a ferocity that I think I surprised myself with. I believe it, because I lived it, I lived it, because I believed in it. Though at the time, I don’t even think that crossed my mind.

If you missed it, you can read last week’s here:

but I’ll quote the very end of the essay here, now, for those who are short on time:

Bottom line, take the chances, take the risks, buy the typewriters, write the poems. You never, ever know what is waiting around the very next corner for you, you never know what’s coming. Be there when it does, be there when time catches up and you fall right into the loving arms of that 1% that gets graced with luck.

You never know. You just never know.

You never know. And then, one day you’ll realize you do know, and you’ll look around at all you have, all you’ve become, all you are now, and you’ll understand what I so clearly saw after I wrote that anniversary post. You’ll know that taking that risk, that jumping when you weren’t ready, has unlocked every lock on every door, that it kicked them open, that it was the push to the snowball of the rest of your life.

You’ll also realize, as I did, that fear lies.

Fear is the liar that steals hope to fill its lungs, it breathes it in and holds it and leaves you windless and gasping. Fear tells you that you’ll never be ready, you’ll never be worthy, or able, or talented enough, that you’re where you are because you’re not made for somewhere else. Fear will whisper sweetly into your ear that you need it, that you cannot possibly walk away from it, that no one else would ever hold you like it can. It will put you down then make you believe it wouldn’t dare, it will steal and steal and steal until all you know is giving away, until you convince yourself it was your idea in the first place, that you wanted to give it all away, all the amazing and unbelievable magic that lives right on the other side of what if.

Fear told me no one wanted to read some stupid poem from my stupid broken brain. Fear told me poetry was dead and that my deep necessity to write it was worth nothing at all. Fear told me I’d be alone, too. Told me that what I was waiting to find would never find me, that I’d have to choose one day, I’d have to settle, or I’d have to suffer.

Fear lies.

I tell you with no embellishment, without a single hint of hyperbole, that all I have today is from believing, truly believing, that the words fear was so often filling my ears with, were lies and nothing more. Everything, from that one brave moment where I believed Sarah when she told me people would care, that people would read, that it was worth it to spill out the truth that lives within you.

“Maybe the world needs to see YOU,” she said one day when I told her I didn’t need to see the big wide world outside my doorstep. Fear told me I was content with the life I’d been living, fear told me I couldn’t figure out the sicknesses that plagued me, that I couldn’t wander too far from home, that I would dissolve or explode or erupt or melt if I tried. Fear showed me the simple dot to dot of the rest of my life, then gave me the pen and told me to connect them.

Fear lies.

I wrote the poem on a busted and ancient typewriter. I scanned it in. I posted it on a social media app that still hadn’t found its feet. My whole life changed.

I risked it, too. I refused to settle, refused to let anyone else settle with me, and told myself I was brave enough to be alone, if alone was the alternative to a life of halfway filled, of halfway to the kind of love we all deserve, but refuse to chase.

Then, and this is the part I don’t speak of often, that bravery was tested. Then, all the things fear was whispering, was shouting into my ears, happened. I was alone, for years and years and years I was alone, and it was hard, and it was brutal, and more poetry came out of those years than I ever thought possible, and I just kept sharing them. I kept ripping open that little vulnerable heart and letting its beat match that of the keys on that silly old typewriter and you came and you read and you found me and I found you aching and hurting and waiting too and we all just were together and it was beautiful and painful and so fucking lovely it hurts to speak of now. Fear told me no one would care, you all came and told me otherwise and together we turned and faced the dark and twisted face of it and absolutely obliterated it with light.

Fear lies.

Love, it turns out, doesn’t.

We can become the sum of all our risks, the triumphs that come only when we’re strong enough to admit that we are scared in the first place. We can put ourselves out there, then, when it is hardest. We can believe, with all our silly hearts that something more is bound for us, it’s been coming all this time, and we’ve only to wait and refuse to settle for less in the meantime.

Point is, take the risks. Take the leaps. Put yourself out there time and time and time again, even if it’s scary, especially when it’s scary. Tell the people you love them when your heart fills your throat with the truth of that love. Tell them, and damn the consequences. Admit when you’re afraid, and move forward anyway.

I’m here to plead with you, to tell you I have seen the other side and I know it’s beautiful and I know you can have it too and I feel like Bill Murray on Scrooged shouting into the television cameras that you’re WORTH WAITING FOR and worth being scared for and all you have to do is just try to see it too.

See it too, please see it too. Fear will tell you that you should not, that you cannot, that you’ll never be brave enough. Fear will tell you it only happens to someone else, never you, that you’ll be where you are, who you are, for the rest of eternity and that you damn well better start accepting that. Fear will tell you to give up, to give in, to relent, to acquiesce. Fear will tell you it has to be this way.

Turn to it. Face it. Remember…

Fear lies.

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Fear is the liar

that steals the hope from before,

and haunts us after.

Haiku on Life by Tyler Knott Gregson

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