Deep fear and feeling

Wrapped in four different blankets, my hoodie pulled up over my thinning hair, I feel the thud thud thud of my heart deep within. Pumping oxygen to muscles primed to fight or flight, the whisper of shallow breath cooling my lips, pupils expanding in the dim light. But tonight is relaxed, a soft end to a weekend, a day off the following day, a cocoon of ambient lighting, deep bass, tea and company. Yet this insidious, deep, ever-present fear underlines every moment. Snaking its way up through my throat, a long, shaky exhale not enough to disperse the cortisol that’s been flooding this body for as long as I can remember.

Rationally, I don’t know what it is. That constant fear that I am In Trouble, that somehow I will get Found Out, but honestly, what for, I have no idea. For being wrong. For not being enough. For existing. For all this and more, the things I can’t put into words, things that are at most a fleeting sound, a glimpse, a shadow in the back of my mind. All the things that spoke truth to me, whilst I switched myself into whoever I was talking to at the time. A way to protect something that I have no name for.

Weirdly, the more I make peace with myself, the more this feeling seems to rise and start to stick around. I’m feeling the most confident, the most at peace that I have felt, maybe ever. And yet, simultaneously, I feel the most fear, too. The more I relax into myself, the more this thing inside me twists and turns and raises terror that has me screaming in my sleep. What is it, this deep fear? Am I creating space for it, the more I let go?

I think it needs to come out, whatever this anxiety is. It needs to be felt. This journey of final understanding, four decades in the making, has pushed and squashed fear down, leaving an underlying dread that coloured my days but that I thought was normal. I ignored it, I didn’t want to pay it attention. Now, letting go, expanding into myself, colouring in blankness, peeling back layers, existing in a sort of lightness – there is more space to hear. Bubbles rise to the surface, things long buried, things shouting to be heard. And so I let it expand, this deep fear, this beating heart. Monsters that chase me at night, a world that’s louder than I remember, an awareness that is highly alert for danger, for judgement, for discovery. I need to feel it, I know it. As unpleasant as it is, I think the smallness of life right now is a step forward.

My world has shrunk, as I’ve said before. But this time it is my world, and I’m real, and true, and tentative. This deep fear is keeping me small, and at the same time, keeping me safe. This shiny new me, uncovered, a small smile playing on lips, a new lightness of step. It has a purpose, and it deserves to be felt in all the panic, all the wide eyes and racing mind. The shaking hands, the deep, inexplicable terror. It hurts and it heals, little by little.

So, with curiosity, trepidation, and honestly a little resignation, I walk alongside the fear. To hear what was underneath all these years, to begin to understand and then to let it go. In all is waves. In all is a cycle. Seasons rise and fall, and this will fall too, in time.