My earliest memory of being afraid is from when I was four years old.
Not afraid of the dark exactly. Not afraid of anything I could point to or name. Just afraid in that deep, whole-body way that a four year old can’t explain to anyone including herself.
I slept with my parents for as long as they let me.
When my sister was born I was five I lost that option. But I found workarounds. I’d wait until my dad left for his shift in the morning and slip into bed with my mom. Or I’d stay there with her until he came home at night. Shift work has its advantages when you’re a small child looking for any reason to not be alone.
I just needed someone else in the room.
I needed to know I wasn’t the only one there.
Because even then, even at four and five years old, I somehow knew there was more in a room than what other people seemed to notice. I just had no idea what to do with that knowing. No language for it. No framework. Just a feeling that sat in my chest every night like a stone.
So I did what any child does with something they can’t explain.
I was afraid of it.
That fear followed me for decades.
Into my teens. Into my marriage. Into a bedroom I shared with my husband where I still couldn’t let myself fully relax or fall asleep.
I slept with a nightlight on well into my thirties. Couldn’t be home alone without the television running. Slept with the covers pulled over my head and my fingers in my ears trying to drown out something I still didn’t have a name for.
I got ear infections constantly. For years. My body responding physically to something my mind hadn’t caught up to yet.
I was exhausted in the way that fight or flight every single night will exhaust you. Running on three hours of sleep and a full work day and sheer stubbornness.
And I told people I was a night owl.
Because night owl sounded normal. Night owl was something people understood without follow up questions.
The truth was harder to say out loud.
As terrified as I was and I was genuinely, completely terrified I was equally drawn to it.
I couldn’t stop seeking answers. Couldn’t stop visiting psychic after psychic looking for someone who could tell me what was happening to me.
Every single one of them said the same thing.
You have the gift.
And not one of them told me what to do with it.
Until 2003. One man. Who looked at me and said something so simple it almost made me angry that nobody had said it sooner.
He told me I shouldn’t be afraid. That this gift came from God. That I could trust my angels and follow the signs.
That was it.
No drama. No ceremony. Just a quiet permission I had been looking for since I was four years old lying awake in my parents’ bed waiting for my dad to leave for work.
Little by little not all at once, not in a single moment I started to trust it.
I kept going even when I was terrified. Even when I had no idea where it was leading.
I kept going because somewhere underneath all that fear I already knew.
I just needed someone to finally tell me it was safe to know it.
If something has been scaring you and calling to you in equal measure since you were small that’s not a sign to stop.
That’s the thing worth following.