Sometimes I know I’m scared before I know how to explain why.
I have pieces of what I want to say. A question. Something I read. A possibility I wish I hadn’t started thinking about yet. I try to put them together, but they don’t always come out in an order that makes sense to me.
That is a hard place to be when what I want most is to understand.
I can become so aware of how I sound that I lose track of what I needed to say. Am I explaining this right? Is this a question I should already know the answer to? Am I making too much of it?
Then, somewhere in all those questions, I start feeling small. Unintelligent. Like a pest for needing to go over something one more time.
I want to be careful with those words. I know how much they hurt, and I don’t want to keep using them against myself.
There is a difference between struggling to explain something and having nothing worth saying. I can remind myself of that, even on a morning when it is difficult to believe.
I’m allowed to need time to understand my own body. I’m allowed to ask what a word means. I’m allowed to say, “This scares me,” before I can explain every reason it scares me.
I’m also learning to be clearer about what would help. Sometimes I need information. Sometimes I need a little time to finish my thought. Sometimes I want to share a fear without needing to solve it in the same breath.
I don’t always know which of those I need right away. I’m still learning how to recognize it and say it plainly.
That learning deserves some patience, too.
I think about how gently I would want to respond to someone who was trying to tell me they were scared. I would want them to have enough time. I would want them to know they could start again if the first sentence came out wrong.
I want to practice giving myself that same room.
So I can start with what I know: I’m worried. I have questions. I’m trying to understand. The rest can come a little at a time.
My words don’t have to arrive perfectly to be worth hearing. Today, I’m letting that be enough to begin.
