My greatest fear, I have discovered, is getting what I want. I crave my deepest desires with an intensity that is distracting, and when I am still and visualize what they would look like, feel like, taste like, I feel sick — a metallic taste lingering on my tongue like it is meant to be there. I cannot possibly let go and relish in those dreams being realized because that would mean I actually believe I deserve them. That I am worthy. That they are rightfully mine. I think there is something deeper hiding beneath that fear. What if finally receiving everything I have wanted means losing the identity I built around longing? What if peace becomes permanent and I no longer know who I am? Who would I be if I stopped surviving?

Since my divorce, one of the things I have been doing is getting to know myself through the lens of no one else. Turns out I do not like blueberries in my smoothies. I am a morning person. I like being on time or early. I am irrationally afraid of getting the mail. My life has become a classroom where I am both student and teacher, learning what is true about me and what isn’t, what is important to me and what isn’t. My gut instinct, I have learned, is quiet. She is calm and wise, and will not shout to be heard. I have to become very, very still to hear her, lest I overstimulate her and she recedes beneath the noise. For years, I confused urgency with wisdom simply because urgency is obnoxiously louder, pushier, more aggressive. I don’t want to become the poster child for anything. It feels strange to speak about divorce when I have only recently become someone who is divorced. I was married for seventeen years, you see. You don’t just snap your fingers and forget what that life felt like.

The strangest part is that I don’t miss the chaos nearly as much as I expected to. I do, however, find myself unnerved by the calm. My home is peaceful. Decisions belong to me alone; the very air I breathe feels more expansive, like there is so much of it, and it never seems to run out. There is no constant scanning of the emotional horizon, waiting for the next darkening. The currency of chaos has been replaced by a quiet so unfamiliar that, at times, it feels claustrophobic. Fear was my forever, so it makes sense that this freedom feels frightening — like a free fall, instead of the relief you would think holds hands with peace.

I was married for much longer than I was ever single. I know how to be married. What I don’t know is how to exist without structuring my inner world around survival, each action neatly labeled with a pretty sticker naming the reaction. I spent so many years becoming someone who could withstand uncertainty that I never stopped to ask who I might become if uncertainty was no longer in charge. That was never an option until now. I still catch myself reaching for what is familiar, even when what is familiar is what hurt me. Predictability can masquerade as safety; my nervous system is learning this new dance, even though it often feels like she has two left feet and no sense of rhythm.

One of the markers of healing, for me, is when something feels scary. Not danger scary. Growth scary. New scary. It doesn’t make the experience any easier, but it does make it identifiable. I like having language for things. Naming an internal experience helps me feel as though I am riding the beast instead of being dragged by my hair through the ring. And maybe, that’s what healing really is. Not the disappearance of fear, but the ability to recognize it without instantly obeying it. Maybe I am not actually afraid of getting what I want; I’m just scared to give myself permission to believe I actually deserve it. And maybe, just maybe, that strange disorientation I keep feeling isn’t necessarily a sign that something is wrong. What if this aching newness, this fresh breeze kissing my raw, searing skin, is what it feels like to meet the version of me that could only see the sun once she was no longer busy surviving?