Scared to Start

What Songs Can Teach Us If We Don't Just Listen, We Feel Them

Songs have such a deep impact on who we are and how we relate to the world around us. They have the power to shape our minds and feelings. Songs are not just heard, they are felt. As I shuffled my playlist, “Scared to Start,” a song by Michael Marcagi filled my ears. So I began to sketch with every beat and every lyric across the page. There’s a trembling in the bones when we stand at the edge of something we want but fear will swallow us whole. Scared to Start is the heartbeat before the leap, that hush when your hand hovers above the phone, typing and deleting the same message to someone you almost loved enough to break yourself open for. It’s the way a paintbrush hovers above a blank canvas, bristles wet with a color you’re terrified to commit to. We clutch our secrets like stones in our pockets, too heavy to carry yet too precious to cast into the water.

And so, we stand at the shoreline of our own becoming, watching the tide pull us forward and back, whispering that maybe it’s safer to stay dry, to stay the same. But the truth beneath Marcagi’s melody is that not starting is its own kind of heartbreak, the quiet ache of unopened doors and unsent letters. It’s the way we hold back “I love you.” We tell ourselves we need more time, more signs, more courage. Yet the song hums a simple truth: beginnings are never guaranteed, and the only thing braver than standing at the edge is stepping off it, barefoot and trembling. Because in the end, the risk of falling is softer than the regret of never flying at all.

I illustrated what the song represented to me. Somewhere, on a road that hums like memory, an old green pickup truck moves slowly forward. Its paint is faded, chipped in places, as though time and weather have had long conversations with it. Inside, two people sit, side by side, not touching, not speaking, just driving. This isn’t a story about love when it’s easy. It’s about love when it’s real.

Trucks, especially old ones, are inherently emotional objects. They carry more than tools or cargo, they carry the weight of time, of stories that can’t be retold without a pause or a breath. An old green truck like this one doesn’t just move forward, it remembers. Every dent, every rust spot, every mile it has carried someone away from, or toward something. It knows what it means to keep going when you don’t feel ready. In the bed of this truck isn’t luggage or a mattress on moving day. It’s a heart. Fragile, cracked open, exposed to the elements. That image speaks loudly, in its quiet way. Most of us try to hide our wounds. We armor up, cover them with smiles and half-truths. But here, the heart is out in the open. It’s broken, and it’s riding in plain sight. This, I believe, is a symbol of profound bravery. To show your heart, as it is, when it’s still aching… that’s not weakness. That’s strength with the volume turned down.

There’s something disarmingly hopeful about a single bandage stretched across a cracked heart. It’s not enough, not really. It won’t hold forever. But that’s the point. Healing often starts small. It starts when we acknowledge that we’re not okay and still say, “But I want to try.” The heart in my illustration reminds me of what Brene Brown says: “Vulnerability is having the courage to show up when you can’t control the outcome.” And let’s be honest: love is a gamble where the stakes are everything. Sometimes, the only thing holding a relationship together is one final, fragile bandage, the decision to stay a little longer. To drive a little farther. It’s the tiniest acts of repair, sitting in the front seat when it would be easier to walk away, that keep us connected.

Two people. That’s it. No explanation, no faces, just the posture of shared space. We don’t know if they’re in love, if they’re leaving something or heading toward it. But they are together. And maybe that’s the most honest part. In a world that glorifies certainty, this image is a quiet rebellion. These two aren’t triumphant. They’re not posing for a highlight reel. They’re doing the hard work of presence. Showing up, with the pain in the back and the road ahead unclear. What if real intimacy doesn’t always look like candlelight and chemistry? What if sometimes it looks like driving in silence with someone who knows where your broken pieces are, and sits with you anyway?

Behind the truck is chaos. Beautiful, colorful, uncontainable chaos. Scribbles of every shade twist into each other like thoughts that haven’t landed. They stretch across the sky like the inner map of a human heart, untidy, unfiltered, layered with meaning. This is how the past shows up. It rarely offers clean exits. It’s loud. It bleeds into the present. And yet, it fades the farther the truck drives. We don’t erase our past. But we can choose not to let it steer. Those scribbles might be the fights we couldn’t finish. The words we never said. The fear we swallowed for too long. But color is not the enemy. The mess, in many ways, is the art.

Along the right side of the road, telephone poles rise like sentinels, ordinary, but significant. They remind us that we are never truly alone, even when we feel it. Communication is always possible, even across silence, even after damage. Maybe love is like that: a fragile wire stretched across impossible distance, still humming with the chance of connection. Even when we’ve stopped talking, there’s still a current. The poles aren’t there to decorate. They’re there to deliver messages. To hold the weight of what we’re scared to say. Maybe, for these two people in the truck, it’s not about the volume of words exchanged. It’s about the quiet faith that something still connects them.

Michael Marcagi’s “Scared to Start” isn’t just a song. It’s a confession. A prayer. A breath held in the chest. His voice doesn’t shout. It aches. It holds the tremble of someone who has tried and failed, and is still willing to try again. “I’m scared to start,” he sings, and suddenly we all are. Whether it’s a new relationship, a creative pursuit, or the terrifying decision to keep loving someone when it’s hard, we all carry this fear. And yet… the truck moves. That’s the miracle. You don’t have to feel brave to act brave. You don’t have to be ready to begin. Sometimes starting is an act of faith so small it feels invisible. But it counts. Every single time.

So what does this art mean for us, the viewers, the listeners, the ones who know what it’s like to carry a cracked heart? It means: you don’t have to be whole to move forward. You don’t need closure to leave. You can be terrified and brave at the same time. Healing doesn’t always look like resting. Sometimes it looks like driving, with your wound in the back and your person in the seat next to you. And maybe the most important lesson of all: the road we’re scared to take might be the very one that leads us home.

In the end, this isn’t a song or story about a truck or a heart or two people. It’s a story about all of us. About what it means to love after loss. About art that tells the truth when words won’t. About songs that hold our fears so gently we forget they were heavy. If you’re scared to start…start anyway. Even if it’s small. Even if the heart is cracked. Even if you don’t know the destination. Because there’s something holy about movement. Something healing about going forward. And if you’re lucky, there might just be someone in the front seat, ready to go with you.