When people ask me what makes me nervous, I usually pause.
The truth is, not much does—at least, not in the way most people mean.
I understand what nerves feel like. I know the quickening of the heart, the restless hands, the tightness that gathers behind the ribs. I have felt it before.
It is familiar, but it is no longer where I live.
Somewhere along the way, my body rewired its response to fear.
Instead of freezing or spiraling, I sharpen.
When chaos rises, I move into clarity.
When danger appears, I do not retreat; I step into a higher mode of functioning.
It is not that I am fearless.
It is simply that fear no longer paralyzes me the way it once did.
This shift was not a conscious decision.
It grew, almost without my permission, from the landscapes I had to survive.
Fight or flight became something else entirely: assess, act, adapt.
A rhythm etched into me by necessity, not by choice.
Truthfully, the thing that makes me most nervous is not danger.
It is disconnection.
It is the quiet fear that perhaps no one will fully understand the way my mind moves—
the way crisis focuses me while calmness can leave me restless,
the way silence sometimes feels heavier than noise,
the way action often feels safer than stillness.
I do not fear falling apart.
I fear becoming invisible in the places where I have remained strong for too long.
Even then—even when the thread of connection feels thin—I do not stop.
I pick up my lantern.
I keep walking.
I remain oddthentic to the core of who I am.
I would rather be misunderstood and real than silent and small.
I would rather carry the weight of my own rawness than dilute myself to fit someone else’s comfort.
So what makes me nervous?
Not the storms.
Not the unravelings.
Not even the vastness of the unknown.
It is the spaces where my language does not quite translate.
The places where being fully myself might mean standing a little apart.
But even there, I am learning to stay.
To breathe.
To listen.
To trust the ground under my feet.
The nervousness does not mean I am lost.
It means I am standing at the edge of something real.
Sometimes, in that quiet space, the fireflies find me first.
Sometimes, I have to light the way myself.
Both are good.
Both are true.
Both are home.
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