I'm not brave.

I'm not brave.

I want things to stay as they are, truth be told.

I prefer an even keel.  A steady flow of manageable sameness.

As much as I issue challenges, even if they remain in my head, the truth is that I don't like to be challenged myself.

As much as I'm willing to admit that there are things I don't know and claim that I'm always open to learning, the truth is that I think I'm right about the things I do know (or think I know) and that I'm usually pretty confident about my rightness.

I hate messy things.  They unnerve me.  I prefer order.  I want things to just stay in place.

I care too much about what goes on in other people's heads.  I care too much about how I am perceived by others.  I often imagine others' incriminating, head-shaking disappointment once they actually discovered who I am, what I value, what I believe, what my views are, what my aspirations are.  I consistently imagine being exposed as a fraud.  You don't belong, you know you don't belong, but for some reason you want people to believe that you do.  

I don't like being faced with difficult questions.  Acknowledging my cowardice, I'd rather ignore them and let them somehow self-resolve.  Just because I'm not God doesn't mean that I'm completely powerless, but I'd rather allow my share of powerlessness to be brought into relief and it push me along like a gentle current.

I usually hang back.  Let other people hurl themselves into the fray.  Let other people be bold and declarative.  Let other people draw a decisive line in the sand and dare others to cross it.  Let other people respond appropriately.  I could even be accused of apathy.  Let other people be bothered.

I want to be loved.  Like any human being, I want people to care about me.  But I don't want fierce emotional stakes attached to me.  I can be a disappointment, and failing to meet others' expectations weighs heavy.

I fear my ordered, constructed, predictable, manageable space becoming suddenly unzipped.  I'd stand helplessly as all the unresolved jumble I'd carefully stowed away came tumbling out in a rush.  I would handle it.  Somehow, I always do.  But it would be one more niggling thing to occasionally jostle my mind and make me cringe to remember that time when.