Maybe you're not afraid of failure. Maybe you're afraid of winning. Because right now, you're safe in the story of what could be. You're the person with the dream. The person with untapped potential. That's a comfortable identity. It lets you feel special without proving anything. But the moment you actually succeed, you have to maintain and defend it. The dream stops being this beautiful, protected thing in your mind and becomes something real that can be criticized, judged, and lost. You've been running toward this finish line for so long that you never stopped to ask what happens when you actually fucking cross it. So you sabotage yourself, not consciously, but you drag your feet just enough to stay in the pursuit forever. You keep yourself close enough to the dream that you can still call yourself a contender but far enough away that you never have to face the terror of actually having it. You're not failing, you’re perfectly succeeding at staying in the only place that feels safe which is this mediocre middle. Where effort counts as enough. Where you get to keep your beautiful story of struggle without ever having to confront the ugly truth that winning might not fix you the way you thought it would.
This is genuinely superb. @PatrickChristys properly rips the piss out of Gary Neville for blaming "angry middle aged white men" instead of calling out Islamist extremism.
Brilliant.