The Moment Before The Movement

I enter a sterile, uniform bathroom lined with showers, bottles stretching across the counter. Shampoo, conditioner, lotion that smells like a life I don’t recognize anymore. Somewhere else, I drift through strangers’ college dorms, opening drawers, slipping into their clothes, wearing them out into the world, hoping to pass unnoticed. My body knows better. I keep trying on selves that aren’t mine, and nothing fits.

The scene keeps shifting.

Next, I relapse and black out. In the dream, I wake the next morning with that old, familiar panic, the dread of not knowing what I said or did, or who I might have hurt. It’s a feeling I haven’t lived in for years, but one my body remembers without being asked.

Then I’m excited about a date with someone I used to see casually in a previous life. The excitement surprises me. So does the embarrassment. Embarrassed by what I once accepted. Embarrassed by how easily that version of desire still knows my name.

All of it leaves me deeply uncomfortable. Old attachment styles. Old desires. Old ways of seeking validation I’ve already outgrown. I feel like a fraud, like I’m about to be found out. My stomach drops. Heat rushes to my face. A reminder of how closely my nervous system is wired to memory, even when I’m unconscious.

All of it lingers after I wake for real. Not as images, but as a question I can’t quite shake: whether the comfort of who I used to be is still trying to claim me, or whether I’m finally being asked to live as the person I was meant to become.

That same unease has made its way into my writing. For the first time in a long time, I don’t know what to say, not because there’s nothing inside me, but because I’ve said so much already. I’ve reflected, processed, named, unpacked. I’ve tended to my patterns carefully, sometimes too carefully, until tending started to feel like another form of staying put. I don’t think this means I’m healed. Healing isn’t a finish line. But it does feel like I’ve reached the edge of something else.

Before, my fear was what if I’m wrong or what if I don’t know enough. Now it’s quieter and sharper than that. What if I act and something actually happens? What if the next step isn’t more insight, but movement? I don’t want to keep running in circles, mistaking awareness for progress. I want to see what happens when I stop narrating the pattern and start living beyond it.

I used to write easily about my fears and insecurities. But once you name them all, once you’ve examined them from every angle, they stop being revelations and start becoming excuses.

Validation seeking. Masking. Fear of speaking out. These things are still part of me. They probably always will be. But I’m done centering them. Right now, it doesn’t feel good to talk about them ad nauseam. In fact, I’m disgusted by them at the moment. And I’m learning to trust that feeling.

There was a time when sharing my deepest insecurities felt necessary. Cathartic. I spent much of my life not feeling heard, and writing gave me language and connection. My vulnerability invited others into theirs, and that mattered. That probably mattered most to me about the whole process. But eventually, emotional purging began to feel redundant. Exposing. Like giving my wounds a permanent stage when they deserve more of a background role.

This is where the law of attraction quietly enters the room. At some point, endlessly talking about your patterns gives them more weight than they deserve. I don’t want to give my issues a platform anymore. Not because they’re gone, but because they don’t get to drive. I’d rather notice them as a passenger on the train than let them take the wheel.

The truth is, the old versions of me were easier to inhabit. They required less responsibility. Less integrity. Less follow through. I could stay there forever. I have endless stories, endless vulnerabilities, endless insight. I know that terrain well. But it has outstayed its welcome.

Growth eventually demands allegiance.

Even considering this shift, I catch myself imagining disappointment. From readers. From people who found comfort in my earlier work. There’s no evidence this disappointment will happen, but it exposes an old reflex of living for others instead of myself. Many of my dreams lately include people from my past, some still present, some long gone. In them, my actions make me physically uncomfortable. Not because they’re immoral, but because they’re no longer true.

So this is a transition.

I’m moving into action. I’m still telling my story, but I’m also documenting what comes after reflection. The tools. The choices. The forward motion that happens alongside fear, not after it disappears.

This space is changing, because I am.

And I’m curious to see who I become when I stop trying on other people’s clothes.