The bane that is the girly-girl dress

I have never been a girly-girl. Despite that, my mom took me shopping for a dress as a Christmas present one year, and I fell head-over-heels in love with a girly-girl dress with lots of fluffy layers. The kind that was gathered so much at the waist that when you spun in circles, IT WENT STRAIGHT OUT.

Not long after Christmas, my sixth grade teacher announced that we were going on a field trip to watch the symphony, and that we’d all have to wear our Sunday best. Yes!! Everyone would get to see my fabulous dress!

We went to the symphony and I felt like a princess. It felt weird and not entirely like me, but kinda nice, too.

Then we came back for a regular last-half of the school day. I sat down at my desk, and the the blasted layers grabbed hold of the top of the chair and stayed there! Unbeknownst to me, as I sat down, my unders showed through the cutout in the back of the chair. A little window to display things not meant to be displayed.

To make matters worse, the kid behind me passed around a note.

The note made it through three rows of kids before my bff wadded it up and left her seat without permission to come tell me I had exposed myself to the class.

In high school, I didn’t write. I was too afraid of being exposed to the world. Afraid that someone would read it, think that I was really writing about myself, and judge ME accordingly. Just like with the unders, I worried that even when I didn’t mean to, I’d expose things about myself I didn’t want exposed.

I don’t know when that changed for me. Maybe after reading enough books, especially different books by the same author, and saw how different the characters were from each other. Or maybe I realized that writers write main characters they LOVE, but not necessarily ones they ARE or ones they are dying to BE. Or maybe I just got more comfortable with who I am.

Either way, the I'm going to be exposed! feeling isn't there anymore. Sure, whatever I write will show my tastes, and the good characters will have traits that I love in people, but I guess those just aren’t underwear exposing kinds of things to me.

So what about you? Does being scared hold you back from things? (I mean being scared of the figurative "being exposed," not the literal. I totally understand about the literal.) Has it ever? Or how did you get over it?
.