can't

Spend a few minutes in a grammar, usage, or editing class, and you'd better believe you're going to get at least one pretty little lecture about the difference between can and may. 

Can, they'll tell you, means that you are able to do something. ("I can ride a bike.")

May, on the other hand, indicates permission or possibility. ("You may do that."/ "It may happen.")

At this point prescriptivists get all high and mighty about maintaining "proper" usage and descriptivists go on a cranky rampage about how language changes and prescriptivists should just unwad their panties and join the twenty-first century, for heaven's sake. 

And though I'm a good little ELang major and have taken grammar, usage, and editing classes galore and have heard the soap box rants about linguistic purity and the grumbles about letting English evolve (all while remaining uncharacteristically neutral about the issue, I might add), I think that when it comes to my own life and abilities, I just can't seem to get the hang of what each word truly means. 

(Yes, I'm aware that I correctly used can in the previous sentence.)

You see, I've spent a good portion (say, twenty-two years or so) of my life doubting my abilities, my talents, and my potential. In short, I've been telling myself that I can't over and over and over again. 

I can't run.

I can't be outgoing.

I can't meet new people without insane amounts of trepidation and anxiety. 

I can't dance.

I can't leave the safe little Provo bubble I've grown accustomed to. 

I can't. I can't. I can't. I can't. 

But I can. With hard work and faith, I can do all those things. (Except dance. I really am hopeless in that department.) 

When I tell myself that I can't do something, what I'm unconsciously doing is denying myself permission to try. I'm telling myself that I may not run—I'm not allowed to create that habit. I may not be outgoing—that possibility is in fact an impossibility. And on and on I go, limiting my potential. Limiting my experiences. Limiting myself. 

And I often find myself haunted late at night by missed opportunities. I find myself wondering how much I could have accomplished if I had just removed the apostrophe t from the word can't. And it's painful and disheartening to realize that I'll just never know. That I can't go back and give myself a chance to try, and that I will never know what could have been different if I'd just allowed it to be. 

So I'm going to try something new: I'm going to tell myself that I can. I'm going to give myself permission to try. I'm going to do my very best to drown out that tinny voice of self-doubt in the back of my head that is convinced that trying is useless because I'm just going to fail anyway. 

First can't changed to can? A 10K. It's something I've wanted to do for a while, but it's always been filed away in the category of I can't. But I can. And I may. I'm all signed up, my registration fee is paid, and my training plan is on my desk, ready to be implemented bright and early tomorrow morning. 

And this is just the beginning. Who knows what I'll be able to accomplish once I start to believe in myself a little bit more. Once I stop telling myself that I can't. 

Because I can. 

And I may.

And I will.