02/02/2026
Lately, fear isn’t loud.
It’s familiar.
It shows up in the body first:
the spike, the tightening, the alarm.
I can hear my blood pumping.
Feel my heart beating.
My hands start to tingle.
I clock every ache, every pain,
from my head to my toes.
I look around.
My kids are laughing,
talking to their dad over dinner.
I know where the loop goes.
I know how easily panic turns into escape.
And still - I stay.
For them.
Part of the fear isn’t the panic itself.
It’s what comes after.
Because I know what helps me:
food, movement, tending my space and self.
And once, I lost myself inside those things.
Care became control.
Support became compulsory.
Devotion turned into something I had to obey.
So now there’s hesitation.
Not because those things are wrong
but because my body remembers
what it cost me when they stopped being a choice.
For a long time, panic meant I had to do something.
Fix it. Override it. Optimise my way out.
That only taught my body
that presence required supervision.
I learned early that presence wasn’t safe.
That lesson settled deep into my bones.
Eventually, the body itself
became the place I tried to escape.
So I’m learning something harder.
I’m staying inside the panic without correcting it.
Letting it move through my body
without turning care into another form of control.
This is strength.
Not forcing calm.
Not performing regulation.
Not abandoning myself to feel safe.
The loop breaks here
not through effort,
but through presence that doesn’t flinch.
I can feel fear
and still choose nourishment without punishment.
Movement without obligation.
Care without disappearance.
This isn’t about doing everything right.
It’s about staying.
And every time I do,
my body learns something new:
that panic can exist
without me losing myself again.
The alarm sounds.
Chaos ensues.
Panic present.
I remain.
