There are no guarantees in life. None. Not when it comes to a job or a move or a big financial risk.

And definitely not when it comes to one of the biggest creators of all self-inflicted fear: love. Because we never know what life holds.

But are we willing to keep holding back what our heart desires? Withhold the small whispers of feelings we may not have had for a long time, but are starting to feel again?

Are we willing to not take that one courageous step forward and walk through Door #3 because Door #1 and #2 didn’t yield what we’ve wanted in the past, and we’ve convinced ourselves that what’s behind that third door is more of the same?

I’m not. No, I promised myself I wouldn’t do that anymore.

Yes, I’m scared. Terrified, if I’m perfectly honest. There is no guarantee or certainty behind Door #3 either. How do I not know that I may walk through it and like those old 70s Roadrunner cartoons, fall off a cliff from 10,000 feet in the air which I never saw coming?

How do I know that the door might not slam in my face once I muster up the courage to even knock?

For you…the one who may be waiting for me on the other side: how do you not know for sure that I won’t slam that door in your face out of fear of hurting and disappointing you, like so many others have done in your past?

How do you not know that you won’t like what you see on the other side? Maybe I am not all you had hoped I would be.

There are no guarantees. Nope, none at all.

But why should that stop us from taking a chance? Why are we allowing the unknown—the beautiful, mysterious, oftentimes spectacular unknown—to create so much fear, that it holds us back from stepping toward the new and unexplored door, the one which may lead to exotic roads we’ve never traveled, heart-pounding sensuous lands we’ve never explored and emotional wonders we’ve only dreamed about but never experienced?

It’s like fantasizing about a trip we’ve wanted to take our entire lives, believing it might be the most fulfilling, the most rewarding and magical vacation we’ll ever take, and then refusing to get on the plane for fear it might go down and plummet into the ocean.

But if we do that, we’ll miss out. We’ll miss out on the adventure. We’ll miss out on the possibility that it might be the place we love too much, we may settle there for the rest of our lifetime.

My deepest, darkest secret is that I am more scared to be vulnerable and allow somebody to know the real me than anything else in the world.

I am terrified to fall in love again. It is quite possibly the thing that scares me most in the entire world because I have learned through the most painful of experiences that there are no guarantees.

But I also refuse to allow my fears to run my life anymore. I’m deserving of so much more.

I want to know what’s behind Door #3.

So if you’re up for the adventure, grab my hand, babe and let’s take a chance on each other and see. Let’s have some fun along the way. We’ll laugh and explore together and make some awesome memories doing crazy stuff and collecting big adventures that we’ll look back at one day and smile over.

And although there are no guarantees, and we can’t map out what this is going to look like, maybe we can open ourselves up to the possibility that together we may find exactly what we’ve been searching for all along.

 

Author: Dina Strada

Editor: Catherine Monkman

Photo: Christmatos/Flickr