Fear: such a strange feeling!

Fear…

You whisper things in my ear: heights, abysses, tightening walls, engulfing waters, failures that expose, gazes that reject.
I hear you. I always have. You live within me with an ancient intimacy.

But there is a part of you that speaks louder – almost like a silent scream:
the fear of living a life that is not mine.

That, Fear, is you when you become a mirror – when you show me the risk of losing myself.

I see you grow when I imagine comforts that do not belong to me, stories I did not write and yet almost agree to perform.

I see you when you threaten me with the forgetting of my own voice – the one that runs through me in writing, the one that calls me by name when everything else becomes noise.

And then there are the most profound fears, hidden from my consciousness?
The fear of not being fully seen,
of being read only at the surface, like a book casually flipped through.

The fear that love – the kind I deeply believe in –
might not be able to touch all that I am, as if I were too much… or not enough.

Tell me, Fear:
am I the one shrinking to fit into the world,
or are you the one convincing me there is no space for me in it?

Because the truth – and you know it –
is that you do not stop me. You’ve tried. You succeeded, for a time.

But I write. I create. I return.
I turn you into living matter, into ink, into a path.

You are almost fuel – strange, but sacred.

So explain this to me:
if I know you, if I transform you,
why do I tremble when it’s time to believe in what I’ve been graced with –
this quiet and intense gift I carry in my soul?

Are you hiding in love?
The fear of failing others, of disappointing them, of hurting them without meaning to?

Ah… here you are, more subtle.

I know: I don’t want to be the cause of pain.
I carry an old kind of care, almost a silent pact with harmony.

But tell me – and answer me truthfully –
since when is living aligned with myself a betrayal?

If someone is disappointed, isn’t it simply because they expected a different version of me?
And what if that version was never me?

Perhaps, Fear, disappointment is not failure – but only the distance between what is expected
and who I finally dare to be.

So stay, if you wish.
But stay beside me – not on my way.

I move forward. With fear, yes.
But whole.