There Are Days I Forget to Be Afraid

Day 213 – June 24, 2026

There are days now when I forget to be afraid. Not all day. Let us not get carried away. But for stretches of time. Hours sometimes. I will be working, writing, talking to someone, walking Roger, doing something completely ordinary, and then later realize fear never showed up for its shift.

Nobody called a meeting. Nobody sounded the alarm. My body was just… existing. That still surprises me.

Fear had become such a constant background noise that I did not realize how loud it was until it started turning the volume down. You adapt to things. Even terrible things. Especially terrible things. The body gets used to bracing. The mind gets used to scanning. Eventually vigilance starts feeling normal. Then one day you have a completely uneventful afternoon and it feels almost suspiciously pleasant.

I am learning to trust those moments.

Not interrogate them. Not ruin them by asking how long they will last. Just let them happen. That is harder than it sounds. When you have been scared for a long time, peace can feel temporary in a way that makes you want to prepare for its ending. I am trying not to do that.

I am trying to let a good hour be a good hour. A good day be a good day. A laugh be a laugh. Not evidence of anything. Not a promise. Not a sign from the universe. Just something nice that happened.

I think healing gets romanticized because the real version is so boring. There should be more dramatic music. Instead, you just slowly realize you are doing things without thinking about how afraid you are. That is it. No fireworks. No montage. One day the grocery store is just the grocery store. A shower is just a shower. A knock is still sometimes terrifying, but maybe it passes faster. A nightmare ruins less of the morning.

The fear does not disappear. It just stops being the lead actor in every scene. I can live with that.

Actually, I would like more of that. And maybe that is why I have been throwing myself into work lately. Not to avoid anything. At least I do not think so. I genuinely like it. I like writing. I like building. I like having something to solve. I like the little hit of satisfaction when a sentence finally does what I want it to do. I like looking at a page and knowing it exists because I made it.

That is a good kind of control. Not controlling life. That ship sailed. Controlling what I create inside it. There is comfort there. Purpose too. And every once in a while, if I am lucky, I get so absorbed in whatever I am doing that I forget everything else.

Even fear. Especially fear. Those are good hours. I am collecting them.

Chaos in one hand. Grace in the other.

And a few quiet hours fear forgot to claim.