I’ve lived with fear for most of my life without even knowing it.

Not the obvious kind.
A quieter one.

The kind that makes you:

• finish people’s sentences in your head
• assume what others are thinking about you
• prepare responses before they are done speaking

I thought I was aware.
But I was reacting… constantly.

I was always trying to be seen as good.
Trying to be right.
Protecting an image I didn’t even realize I was holding on to.

And now when I look back, it feels strange.

How did being right become more important than peace?

Why did I think people had the time to sit and think so much about me?

It feels almost silly when I say it out loud.

But it also feels “real”

I can see it now, but I’m not fully out of it yet.

I have trained myself to avoid feeling things so well that my body doesn’t quite know what presence feels like anymore.

And when I say that, I also see that I’m the one who trained it this way.

So then… who am I?

If I am not my thoughts, and I am not my body,
then who am I?

A name?
A role?
A daughter, a wife, a sister, a friend?

Or just someone passing through, thinking she knows, only to realize she doesn’t?

I don’t know if I am ready yet
to be wrong,
to be seen differently,
to not be “good.”

But I can also see that maybe… none of that matters as much as I thought it did.

Love and light

Bindu