Hope Is Not Safe

I thought healing meant feeling less, but what if it means finally letting myself feel everything?

I wasn’t planning on writing this.

I’m not sure I even have the right words for this article. The wide range of emotions swirling around in my head, the high highs and the low lows, that desperate battle within my heart to build a tower so high nothing can get in ever again, all mixed up with wanting to tear down the stones, piece by piece…

Because two and a half weeks ago, something happened. Something that gave me a teeny, tiny glimmer of hope in the situation that has been slowly progressing towards an ending that keeps me up at night. The one my therapist has officially forbidden me from catastrophizing about because my heart starts to race, my stomach churns, and I want to run far, far, far away and never come back.

But hope is scary. Hope is terrifying. Hope is not safe.

I know that I have wrapped myself in a thick cocoon of bubble wrap, where I have stayed snuggly in the middle for over five years. Inside, nothing can hurt me. Because I am prepared for all of the worst-case scenarios. Inside, I’m living suspended in time, where my nightmares bleed into the reality of my day to day. Because being prepared for what might happen, obsessively turning over scenarios in my brain, gives me some semblance of control.

I know that in most of the areas that really count, that really matter, I lost control years ago. I don’t have a say. I barely have a voice.

I try to tell myself I do, over and over again, day after day. But I don’t feel like a warrior with mud smears on my cheeks, sword in hand, charging forward toward the enemy of self-doubt, a battle cry piercing the air around me as I declare boldly, “My voice matters.” I feel more like the exhausted, burned out character with a fatal wound, curled up on the ground, one hand pressed hard against the oozing blood, another hand clawing the ground, trying to drag themselves to safety. In this scene, I am alone. In this scene, it is up to me and me alone.

My mouth is parched, my lips cracked. I can barely say the words, but I know that I must. I must say them, so I do not give up. If I give up, it is over. I am succumbing to death. To defeat. So I summon up every ounce of energy that is left in my tired and worn-out body, my lips forming the first sound… “My voice matters.” It’s hardly a whisper. There is not another soul for miles who hears the faint echo of my voice.

But I hear it. And those three words fill me with a resolve. I will keep going. I will keep fighting. Even if nobody hears—I hear. And that has to be enough.

But here’s the thing.

I’m scared.

Because I can feel a crack in the armor that I have built a home inside of for half a decade.

I have begun to taste the freedom that exists outside of my bubble. Beyond the walls of the prison that I had to build in self-defense.

For so long, it was safer to stay locked up, with my heart hidden in the deepest, darkest vault, behind the most sophisticated lock and key. My heart lay dormant, collecting dust, beating faintly only for my boys. Only for my boys. Ba-dum. Ba-dum. Ba-dum. Ba-dum. Survival. An hour of blood pumping to my heart to get me through another meeting. An hour of blood pumping to get me through dinner and bedtime. Three hours of blood pumping to get me through the sleepless nights, tossing and turning, at war with the little glass box, screaming for my attention, just begging for me to numb out.

Ba-dum. Ba-dum. Ba-dum.

Ba-da BOOM.

My heart skips a beat within my chest.

The numbness is wearing off.

Color is returning to my world. The full grays are becoming more pigmented, so slowly I hardly notice, until early one morning, the most vibrant pinks and oranges painted across the sky… tears rolling down my cheeks as I finally let myself feel the emotions that have been trapped inside of me for so long…

Later that same day, getting ready to go out with friends, the thought of putting on an outfit that makes me feel beautiful again and actually cracking open the eyeshadow palette that has been collecting dust in my bathroom has me feeling…. what is that feeling… excitement? Could it be? When just yesterday, I had that thirty-minute phone call that filled me with such rage I wanted to smash everything within arm’s reach?

At the restaurant, surrounded by women who know the depths of my soul, laughter bubbling out of me effortlessly over and over again… what is this feeling… joy? Could it be? When just last week, I cried myself to sleep over the injustices, the helplessness of knowing I am not in control?

But my fortress of safety… that place I run to when that foreign feeling of hope is a little too strong for comfort…

There are cracks in the walls now. The floorboards are starting to sag. The staircase beneath my feet no longer feels safe.

I am starting to feel again.

I am coming alive again.

Pop. Pop. Pop. Pop. The bubblewrap, my cocoon of safety, deflating around me, one day at a time.

Not one single moment… a thousand tiny moments over the last six months, so gradual I could hardly feel the change…

Every single time I reach for my sneakers and AirPods and head outside for a long, long walk, giving myself the time and space to process what happened 24 hours before. Pop.

Every single time I let myself sit in the pain, in the sadness, allowing the tears to run down my cheeks, crying out, asking questions… instead of running from them.

Instead of reaching for my phone.

Instead of reaching for a glass of wine.

Pop. Pop. Pop.

Every single time I carve out and prioritize alone time, my favorite book in one hand, watercolors in another, soft music playing in my ears, allowing me to safely feel the emotions I would have suppressed a year ago. Every time I reach for something that will fill up my cup, instead of drain it… pop.

Two and a half weeks ago, I let myself hope, against my better judgment… and I was right. I was right. Nothing came of it except a big, fat nothing.

As usual.

This is not a new experience for me.

The number of times in the last five years that I was so convinced, so sure that this would finally be the thing to change the tide… and then the crash. Disappointment. Anger. Burrowing just a little bit deeper into my cocoon of self-preservation.

But this time, it was different.

Because over the last six months, I don’t feel so safe inside the cocoon anymore.

It’s dark there. And I’m numb. So numb.

But outside the walls that I’ve built around myself, the feeling is coming back. Yes, there is pain. Yes, there is heartbreak. Yes, there is disappointment.

But there are other emotions, too. Emotions I am realizing I have not felt, really, TRULY felt, since I was 14 years old.

I’m finding myself again.

Not who I was when I was with him.

Not who I was in the weeks after my dad died and suddenly I didn’t know up from down.

But who Deborah was before her world turned to black and white. Before she sought validation and worth in the words of a man. Before moving her body became a prison. Before she had to put her heart under lock and key, because feeling things meant disappointment, hurt, and pain.

So this time, it was different. Over the last two weeks, I have been fighting. I did not roll over and accept defeat when the disappointment came. I allowed myself to feel sorrow, I allowed myself to feel anger.

But I didn’t stay there.

I walked and I cried.

I read and I underlined.

I socialized and I laughed.

I stayed.

Even though it’s scary. Even though my instinct is to run back into my fortress and build it even stronger than before.

But I’m never going back.

I will hold space for the questions why, and the memories that will haunt me until the day I die.

But I will keep fighting for beauty.

Today, I am picking up the chisel and mallet, and I am taking a blow to the walls that I needed for so long to survive each day.

Because maybe, just maybe, my heart is not permanently broken.

Maybe, just maybe, the hope that I feel inside is here to stay, because for the first time in my life, it is a hope that is not being built on my circumstances, but rather hope springing forward from the depths of my soul.

This is what it feels like to come alive again.

---

If you’ve been following my story, thank you for being here. And if you’re new here, I’d love for you to stay.

None of us were meant to do this alone. 🤍