Martes 9 de diciembre de 2025
The other day I was thinking: «What is the one thing that has defined me throughout the years, since I was little?» It didn’t take long to answer. It’s my ability to stand up against fear and swim toward it, even while being terrified of every possibility.
When I was little, I was abused in many ways. I was also bullied everywhere throughout my childhood and adolescence. I had no escape—bullied at home, at school, on the school bus, at church, and in the neighborhood. Yet somehow, I never once stopped being the way I was, acting the way that came naturally to me, or dressing the way I wanted.
In the context of my existence, and especially in my homeland, I’ve confronted hate in the streets, hate from relatives, hate from acquaintances. Naturally, I fear it (I’m a human being, after all). But I’ve always preferred being rejected, over and over, than betraying myself. «Myself,» an individual who contradicts himself daily as he evolves—forever changing, forever transforming.
Want another example? I have never, ever accepted a job thinking I was the right fit for it. Impostor syndrome lives in me. Sometimes I feel like I invented it; it’s so embedded in my soul, so fully in my veins… I don’t know life without it. I’m not proud of this, but neither am I ashamed. It’s just the way it is.
I may have gotten better at dealing with it through the years, and I’m constantly working to shake that shit out of my body, but what really matters to me is that even with all this noisy distortion in my head, I have said yes to every one of those jobs. And the job I doubted I could do led me to the next job I doubted I could do. And so on. Here I am now, enjoying myself while doing a job I didn’t think I could handle—for the third consecutive year.
Here I am also writing stories that are about to be filmed, despite my stubborn, perfectionist mind telling me I don’t have the chops to engage even the smallest audience. Believe me when I tell you that, for me, writing—even something as simple as a blog entry—is a huge FU to my mind, a rebellious act against a brain that tries its best to discourage me no matter how many times I practice affirmation exercises in front of my bathroom mirror.
Fear and anxiety are constants in my life. I’d like to say there will come a time when I won’t feel this way anymore. But dumb I am not. I know we all carry heavy crosses on our backs. I have many, like everybody else. Two of them are fear and anxiety. But neither has ever stopped me. Not permanently, and never in a way I’ve regretted later.
Whatever I’ve accomplished in life—as a citizen of the world, a creative person, a professional, a friend, a son, a brother, an individual—I’ve accomplished with fear. Ironically, fear has been my torch. My vengeance has become proving my mind wrong and achieving what she insists I can’t do. With experience, I’ve learned to flip the energy exuding from fear and make it work for me.
Fear is my green light, my go-to sign. When I feel it, I know it’s time to jump. Yes, I might be doubtful and call my friends whining about how I’m not the right person for the project, the job, the opportunity. Yes, I might even reject the offer at first. But then I call back and say: «Sorry, I needed time to think about it. Let’s do it.»
Fear has the shape of my body. And I don’t care. I will keep breaking my way through any door, any window, any fucking threshold I set my eyes on. This is how I’m wired.
Benjamín Cedeño 