Joy Without Vigilance

When you grow up with abandonment living in your bones, you learn to scan the horizon for danger the way other people watch the weather.

Who is leaving next?

When will the disappointment arrive?

Which smile is real, and which one is just the doorway to goodbye?

You become a detective of loss, collecting clues that haven’t happened yet, trying to outrun a pain you’ve already memorized.

I thought vigilance was protection.

I thought if I could predict the moment the floor would give way, I wouldn’t fall so hard. I lived on the edge of every good thing, bracing for the inevitable collapse, holding my breath inside rooms that were meant for laughter.

But all that watching never saved me.

It only stole the joy before it even had a chance to land.

Because the truth is, you cannot control another person’s capacity to stay. People can love you and still leave. They can mean every promise and still be unable to carry the weight of a big, beautiful, real thing. Their limits are not verdicts on your worth. Their leaving is not proof that you were never meant to be held.

And yet, when you’ve known too much loss, you believe a mantra:

Do it alone.

No one is coming.

No one will save you.

You are on your own in this world.

I wore that story like armor.

I called it strength. Protection.

But what if I had it backwards?

What if the completion I kept searching for outside of me had been living inside my ribs all along? What if the love I was begging to be given was already breathing in my own chest? What if I was not half a person waiting to be finished, but a whole, learning how to remember it?

This was the epiphany that began to quiet the alarms inside me.

For the first time, I stepped toward love without scanning the exits. I let myself sit inside moments without dissecting every word for hidden meaning. I stopped waiting for the other shoe to drop, stopped rehearsing the disaster before it arrived.

Not because I became fearless.

But because I finally understood something steadier than fear:

No matter what happens, I will have myself.

If someone stays, I will be grateful.

If someone leaves, I will grieve…and still remain.

This knowing has given me a new kind of freedom.

To love without bargaining for safety.

To enjoy the sweetness of a moment without poisoning it with tomorrow.

To exist inside connection without shrinking in advance of loss.

I am not perfect at it. Sometimes the old alarms still ring in my body. But now I recognize them as echoes, not prophecies.

And I am learning, slowly, to live in joy without vigilance- to meet life with open hands instead of clenched fists- to believe that I am enough shelter for my own heart.

There is such freedom in that realization.