Life has been interesting. Not interesting like a slight snow shower in March, but interesting like a blizzard in the harsh heat of July. My life is incredibly out of character and hard to bear. The things I carry wear on me like sandpaper on polished redwood, slowly removing each pristine layer until it is stripped down to the core. Stifled by my incomprehensible fear of failure, I live my life on the safe side. Instead of putting myself in the open, I hide behind my fears and coast through my trials. I live with these fears, and they keep me sane, make me human, and preserve the meticulous schedules I have created. The schedules I create to maintain order in a life of disorderly fear: fear of not living up to my parents' expectations, fear of failing to be as good as I am able, and fear of people thinking less of me because I don't meet their standards. These fears inhibit me. Like my fear of being poor, they control my habits and my emotions. The never ending struggle to keep my bank account above $1300, the $400 hoarded away in my room, and the psychosis that comes every time a bill must be paid or an unexpected expense appears: all of these weigh on my mind constantly. Instead of pursuing a normal life, I am crippled by my fears and insecurities. Because of them, I will settle for a life of normalcy and mediocrity that will never fulfill the often-ignored person inside of me, and because of them, I will stay alone. Even so, my insatiable fears are not the only pieces of my life that hold blame. With them, I carry unrequited love and lost dreams. I carry years of frantically grasping at emotions that were never there, of dreams I have forgotten to chase, and of memories I'd rather not remember. I carry stories that have yet to be told: stories of love, of rape, and of fear throughout my interesting life. My life doesn't have the pleasantry of a snow shower in March, but the intensity and abnormality of a blizzard in late July. My life is the burden I carry, however interesting it may seem from the outside.