Prompt: A fear you learned to sit with
For most of my life, I thought fear was an enemy.
Something to defeat. Outrun. Conquer dramatically like a movie climax, wind in the hair, background music swelling, me walking away victorious in slow motion.
Turns out? Fear is far less cinematic. And far more stubborn. It doesn’t pack its bags and leave because you read one inspirational quote and drank green tea.
It pulls up a chair. And stays.
The fear I’m talking about isn’t snakes or horror movies or public speaking. Those are easy.
I’m talking about the quiet, everyday fear. The grown-up kind. The one that shows up uninvited while you’re brushing your teeth or trying to fall asleep.
What if the plan flops?
What if I chose wrong again?
What if I embarrass myself spectacularly?
What if things simply don’t go the way I rehearsed them in my head?
Nothing catastrophic. Nothing dramatic. Just small, persistent doubts… tapping you on the shoulder like an annoying notification you can’t swipe away.
For years, I tried to silence it.
I stayed busy. Worked harder. Planned everything within an inch of its life. If I controlled enough things, surely fear would get bored and leave.
It didn’t.
Fear, it turns out, is like that one relative at weddings. Ignore it, and it gets louder.
So one day, out of pure exhaustion, I tried something different. I stopped fighting. I made tea. And I sat down with it. No pep talk. No bravery speech. No “I am fearless” nonsense. Just… sat.
And honestly?
It wasn’t that impressive.
Fear is mostly imagination with bad lighting. Half the things it warned me about never happened. The rest happened… and I survived anyway. Life didn’t collapse. The sky didn’t fall. I adjusted. I learned. I carried on.
Very anticlimactic for something that caused so much drama.
So now, when fear shows up, I don’t try to evict it. I just say, “Okay, sit. But you’re not driving.” It can talk. It cannot decide. That’s the deal.
Because courage isn’t the absence of fear.
It’s making your tea, doing your work, laughing with your people, living your life… while fear sits quietly in the corner like an uninvited guest. These days, fear still visits before new projects, big decisions, or change. But instead of panicking, I nod.
Ah. You again. Stay if you want. I’ve got things to do.
Turns out, the day I stopped trying to conquer fear…was the day it stopped controlling me.
