Neophyte-itis

Finally starting a blog has actually been quite a step for me. Let me explain: I spent three months in an inpatient treatment center sequestered in a "unit" (basically like half of your average dorm room floor or apartment complex) which specialized in treatment for eating disorders. While there, my primary therapist helped me make an interesting revelation about myself. I am reluctant to try new things because I'm afraid I won't be good at them. Being such a zealous and self-chastising perfectionist, I can't stand the idea that I won't be good enough in any way. My therapist called this "neophyte-itis," or a fear of being new at something. My mental illness is interesting in that while part of my mind logically knows things, but my emotional mind is so overwhelming and powerful that it overrides most rational thinking about myself. Example: I know that I can't judge my blog immediately and expect to have hundreds of readers right away, but I fear that no one will ever read what I have to say. So until now, I have never started. The same cycle occurs in many things I consider doing, because I fear being vulnerable. I fear that I won't be accepted. Much of my time these days is spent alone. I have already completed two years of undergraduate study at a liberal-arts university here in Washington; I think back nostalgically at who I was then in comparison to who I am now. I was a completely different person then. Confident, social and fun-loving, I had many friends; I was even in a fraternity (as weird as that seems, judging from the way I've described my contemporary self). I've lost touch with all of them in such a short span of time, and it hurts. Sometimes when I'm at my lower points, I think of myself as someone who "fades in and out of peoples' lives," because of the way in which I seem to have drifted away from all the friends whom I genuinely care about. And so, stricken by neophyte-itis, I worry that my life will be one of loneliness. I desperately want to have people I can really be myself with, but I can't bring myself to open up to anyone beyond my family and my psychologist. I hate to strike a chord of "woe is me," but I can't help it sometimes...