Reid+C's+Final+AmEx+2015+Speech


 * Fear **

Inspiration rarely comes when we expect it, or in the form we hope to see it. It’s 4:32 PM June 9th when I write this, the day before I’m meant to pour my heart out to my peers. I’ve written two of these speeches already, one about honesty and one about the the need for people to contextualize their place in the world and in the universe. I ran the gauntlet of personal and impersonal, close to home and far reaching, but as I sit down close to the last minute a hand-me-down laptop’s keys beckoning to my hands I hear my mother in the next room discussing the logistics of a graduate’s college-bound future. I feel that apprehension I know all too well seeping in for the umpteenth time and I realize what’s ruled my life for so long and what will really provide that connection to my written word that I needed. Fear. I remember Life of Pi and Dinkler’s lectures too, but bear with me here. I’m not gonna talk about it in some metaphorical sense, at least not as much. To contradict my previous statement I’ll posit this: fear is fire. While often presented as something horrible and destructive, it’s there for a reason. It’s at the base makeup of humanity and the hedonist’s treadmill we all run. On occasion we fall off and rather than a laugh track all that plays is the voice in our ear saying “You failed. You fell short. You’re broken. You moron.” You’re burned. My experiences dealing with this has taught me a lot. My family is one of doctors, lawyers, judges, and civil servants. I’m a 17 year old who hasn’t really grown up and has a sub-4.0 GPA. So, taking this at face value, seeing as I’m not apparently set up for greatness despite a common struggle, am I just inherently sub-par? I quietly accepted this role for a long time, waiting to see when I’d just burn out in the face of life’s challenges. I hadn’t applied myself because I wasn’t worth applying. But when it came down to when I’d begun to fall short and my parents asked me how my grades were or how my homework was coming along, I lied. I said everything was fine. I lied to my parents faces without realizing what I’d done. I still wanted to seem successful despite what I’d told myself. Obviously this was the wrong choice and a time of great confusion and frustration followed. What I’ve done in the long term is handicap myself so that the skills that actually got people like my brother and sister through school and on to degrees had even less time to develop. I thought I was doing the strong thing by supposedly accepting what I was, but I was more scared of what people would think when it came down to it. I was too scared to even consider what I could be instead of an anxious wreck. Many gut-wrenching false starts and hurdles later I was diagnosed. I’ve had depression for a very long time, but I only really knew come about two months ago. A month before that I was seeing a new therapist. A month after that I was prescribed medication. Today I’m trying to lay myself out and not look ugly. Today I’m trying to tell myself that I’ve got this speech down and I’m going to hit it out of the park because that’s what I can do. It’s been a weird thing to consider for once that maybe it wasn’t all me. That when I was reading out of sight behind a shipping container during lunch in middle school it wasn’t because I’m a naturally a completely repugnant person. That in a sense I could work past myself and for once if someone didn’t like me it was their problem to deal with. Of course these are all the goals. I still have social anxiety, I still struggle to find compelling reasons to wake up, and I’m still terrified of what sort of career paths might still be open for me in the future and what my family will think upon another closing and which one I choose. The thing is, we only really succeed if what we do with our lives is our own. Whatever I do, so long as I do it as an uninhibited and concentrated version of Reid Crilly, it’ll be just fine. I want to grow up in an America where moving forward is always possible. Where hangups don’t hang us up, and where people can be valid in their existence. I always come back to a quote from Breaking Bad’s protagonist Walter White to sum this up: "I have spent my whole life scared. Frightened of things that could happen, might happen, might not happen. Fifty years I spent like that. Finding myself awake at 3 in the morning. But you know what? Ever since my diagnosis, I sleep just fine. And I came to realize it's that fear that's the worst of it. That's the real enemy. So get up. Get out in the real world. And you kick that bastard as hard as you can right in the teeth."

Myself Breaking Bad
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