Fearless

On resetting your emotional floor

I was journaling the other day and wrote the sentence, “I’m feeling fearless lately.”

Then I paused. And I really sat there and stared at the word “fearless.” And something just kinda went CLICK in my brain and I started tearing up.

I got up from my chair and was overwhelmed by a rush—a release. It was as if the very act of writing “fearless” was me turning a key that unlocked a basement of hidden emotions.

I walked around, kinda frantically, trying to shake off the overwhelm. But I couldn’t. It just kept coming. And so I gave up. I stood still for a moment. Then, I sat down in the middle of my living room and let it erupt. I cried. Hard and a lot and for a while.

The longer I cried, the harder I cried. The harder I cried, the deeper I felt myself descending into this emotional basement.

I felt release. But of what? I kept scanning my mind, trying to understand it. And why did “fearless” trigger this?

And suddenly, I hit the bottom of the basement and was struck:

I don’t live with abuse anymore.

Growing up, I experienced abuse.

Physical abuse.

Emotional abuse.

When we experience abuse on a regular basis, it begins to feel regular.

I know I’m not unique in this.

I also know, in my heart, that no one was trying to hurt me. Adults break kids. Kids break kids. Kids break adults. Adults break adults. We break each other because we’re broken. We’re broken because we break each other.

I’m increasingly convinced that this shitty trauma cycle is unavoidable. Fortunately, some of us reach a point where we realize how broken we are. And then we have a choice: we can walk towards our brokenness, or run away. We can pick up the broken pieces, or keep them locked behind the basement door. When someone asks what’s behind that door, we can summon the courage to find the keys, or we say,

“What door?”

“I don’t see any door.”

The truth is, I’ve known in my mind that I’ve been safe for a long time. But there’s a difference between knowing the truth in your mind and feeling the truth in your nervous system. It was a relaxation and letting go of a tension in my body that I wasn’t even aware I was holding.

“You’re safe,” I said out loud. “Fear allowed you to survive for a long time, but I guess we just don’t need it anymore.”

I sat there, feeling this unfamiliar lack of tension. Tears streaming down my face. Release turned to relief. The longer I sat in the reality of my past sadness, the more I could feel—in real time—my emotional floor dipping lower and lower, which made my “regular” feel higher and higher. And then, suddenly, it was so easy to look up from the basement and feel a genuine perspective on how beautiful and healthy my present emotional reality is.

And how fearless I am now.