FOMO, the fear of missing out, seems to be a common thing among us teenagers. For example fearing that if you won't go to that party, you'll miss something really cool and funny or if you're not invited to that sleepover, you'll be unpopular and on the outside.

With me, I wouldn't say FOMO is a thing that really affects me. However, I have a ton of fears like I'm pretty sure the list of my anxieties would be as long as Santa's wish list (well not actually, but you know what I mean). And I never really tried to get behind it like why I'm afraid of literally everything, I just took it as a character trait, like that's just the way I am. I'm sure that's not 100% wrong but watching Savannah Brown's video "bad at being bad" (you see, I adore her) it occurred to me that the bottom of most of my fears is the fear of not being perfect so people will think I'm dumb.

Yes, that sounds insane and I know not being perfect makes us human but it's just something that's grounded within me.

Just like Savannah, I'd for example love to dance, maybe even in a dance group but I'm insecure that others will think that I'm awful at it and then I'll just feel bad.

Or the fact that I love to sing. As a kid, I always said this is one of my hobbies but now I just kinda hide it and never talk about it cause I'm like "What if they'd expect me to sing well? And what if my voice is actually terrible and I'll just embarrass myself?"

And it's not like I haven't experienced situations like this. For example, we had a playback show at a school trip and I performed my favorite song at that time (a song from a Barbie movie) and the boys started laughing at me and I immediately felt like "Ok, it's clear, I'm just not able to dance in a good way" as an ex-best friend in first grade already pointed out to me that me loving to do pirouettes is not a right way of dancing.

Another situation that kind of assured me in thinking that I can't sing was when I decided to sing in front of my class in 5th grade. Before that, a lot of people have actually told me that I'm good at singing but when some guys started laughing at me I just filed that under "reasons why I apparently can't sing" and that just kinda stayed with me, even years later, when people said my voice was great and just cause that one moment I doubted they were telling the truth.

Maybe it's also just about that we put too much importance on negative rather than positive experiences but that is another topic.

I'm also insecure of my writing, like I could never show this blog to all the people I know in real life, even if this wasn't such a personal blog. Like what if they say my writing is bad? I just couldn't deal with it and I think this is why criticism bothers me so much although it should actually just help me to grow. However, I seem to take everything personally, like it's a flaw of me as a person. For example when my French teacher told me that my dialogue wasn't good, I nearly started crying 'cause I thought I myself was a failure.

It's just a pattern that I noticed. I have no idea if I'll ever get over this issue of mine but maybe I don't need to. Maybe I just have to accept my fears as a flaw that makes me human and helps me find a life of my own someday.

xxx Sarah