Every person in their lifetime will undeniably feel fear. That crippling we all get when we believe our way of life might be in danger from an external or internal force. Some people can get a hit of it from roller coasters. Others can sense it from walking in the dark. Fear takes on many forms, and while it might not be obvious at first. Most people will experience fear in a different way. Most people will feel the fear of rejection.

Every young man can recall a time when they first started to realize that they liked that girl a little more than the others. They can also remember the feeling they got when they tried to walk up to her and was overtaken by this feeling of dread overcoming them. At the time everyone will just assume its nerves giving out. But what people will realize later in life is that, that dread they were feeling wasn't just nerves… it was a fear.

I was young when I first experienced such a feeling, and of course I didn't fully understand what was going on. It was with girl who had been a friend for a while. At that young age feelings are different from how they are now and were much harder to understand. You know the feeling of excitement: racing heart, heavy breathing, shaking knees. You don't feel it so much as an adult.

Now at that time, nobody told me what I had to do, but I feel like everyone has that moment when nature kicks in and they realize they want to tell that person how they feel. I decided one day to try my hand at it. It's a process throughout the day. In the morning, I am hit with the idea, "I'm going to talk to her today." In the afternoon, I start to think about when to do it, "Probably at the lockers at the end of the day." Slowly as the day goes on, an anxious pit in my stomach creeps up my body. Then the moment comes. It's the end of the day and is time to make my way to the lockers.

I'm stopped in my tracks as I see her by her locker. That anxious feeling that has been creeping up my throat has finally plummeted back down like a rock into my core. I knew a part of me wanted to go through with it. Something held me back though. Every step I took towards her felt like pushing two repelling magnets closer together. My breath taken out of me as if I was punched by a pro-boxer, and my mind full of a million reason not to go through with it. All of it cultivating into picking a reason not to do it and backing out.

I didn't know why I couldn't do it. Day after day I would repeat the process. I would try to walk up to her and be met with the same overwhelming feeling to back away and run. At some point it became pitiful. I couldn't even explain to myself why I was having such a hard time. A part of me had just settled on the idea that girls naturally have repellent that wards off boys.

I never truly discovered what was the true cause of my constant failure to confront the girls I liked, as a young man. I didn't have the mature mental capacity to fully understand my situation. As days went by, I thought up a multitude of things I was doing wrong in my attempts. Maybe the setting was wrong, there were too many people, or maybe I needed to be better friends with her, and it would be easier. All these reasons seemed slightly out of my control when you really think about it. It wasn't until a few years that had finally figured out what the root of it all truly was.

I had been under the assumption that all my problems had been external. That if I had changed something about the world or people around me, that my attempts would become more fruitful. Truly though, what was going on was internal. Something inside of me was causing all my strife. It was a fear. I was afraid to talk to the girls that I liked. That pit feeling that filled my body with just the thought of confronting them was a fear of what might happen. I couldn't talk to them because I was too afraid of what the outcomes could be as a result.

Most of time when you think about fear people's minds will think about all the things that could endanger them or their lives. People fail to think about the ways that fear can manifest itself. Fear isn't just a thing that protects us from dangerous situations; if that was the case it wouldn't be that complicated. Fear goes deeper than that. We are afraid of more than just death or harm. Rejection; abandonment; failure; loneliness, it is all part of the complicated inner workings of what it truly means to be afraid.

It can be hard to understand fear in this sense, as it is not a conventional way of looking at it. But once you can grasp the concept of fear, you can start to conquer it. The fear isn't coming from an enemy. It is the exact opposite for a matter of fact. The fear is coming from a place of admiration. Which sounds strange but the means of growing past it is no different than the traditional. Young men and women all face the same barrier which is that most of the people in their lives aren't the perfect characters that they think of. Children compare themselves to this imaginary character they have in their head of someone, and by that standard they see themselves as not good enough for them.

A lack of confidence will fuel any fear. If you aren't confident enough to face your fears than they will always haunt you. It is a matter of gaining the courage to take the step yourself and talk to them. Just the same as you having to gain the courage to walk into your dark basement.

Now it was my time to put my money where my mouth was. Now I say that it was just that simple to ignore your fear. But as I found out it takes more than just knowing to turn your mind around. I might have known why I was incapable of talking to girls, but in practice I was only able to muster up enough fake confidence to talk a girl. Nowhere near enough to ask them out.

Ultimately there was no major event that changed my mind, but I don't believe that that is truly the case with any fear. People can try all their lives to get over a fear they have, and most people can get good at it. But fear is a part of our DNA, and you can't change that no matter how hard you try. You may get good at being able to walk in the dark but will still feel uncomfortable by the act of doing so. The same goes with a fear like mine. I might be able to talk to girls and ask them out naturally today. But I will always have that feeling deep in my core, reminding me of that pit feeling in my stomach, and to remind me that I am afraid.

-Croix Colombo