#analysisuntilache

I always say I’m afraid of heights,

because it’s easier than naming the fears I’ve built brick by brick in my mind.

Heights are simple.

Everyone understands the vertigo, the drop, the way your stomach lurches

when you look down and imagine the end.

But the truth is, I’m afraid of abandonment.

Of being left mid-sentence, mid-love, mid-becoming.

Afraid of the quiet that follows when someone decides

I am no longer something they want to hold.

I’m afraid of silence.

Not the peaceful kind, but the kind that asks questions I don’t know how to answer.

So I fill it.

With chatter, with questions stacked on questions,

with proof that I am interesting enough, warm enough, worth staying for.

I talk because I am trying to be tethered.

Because if I stop, I worry I’ll disappear.

And then there is the fear of falling.

Not from buildings or cliffs, but from people.

From trust.

From moments where I let myself lean,

believing someone will catch me,

only to realise too late that I’ve been bracing myself alone.

So I say I’m afraid of heights.

I let people picture ledges and ladders and open skies.

I don’t tell them that the real fear is the drop inside my chest,

the one that happens when love feels uncertain,

when silence stretches too long,

when I start to wonder if I am already falling

and no one has noticed yet.

Isn’t it ironic

that the girl who dreams in melancholy

is the one who helps others dream hope,

cupping their fears like fragile glass,

speaking gently so they don’t break.

Isn’t it ironic

that she knows the exact words to say

when someone else is drowning,

yet swallows her own grief

until it learns the shape of her lungs.

Isn’t it ironic

that she becomes a lighthouse in storms

she was never rescued from,

burning herself steady

so others can find their way home.

Isn’t it ironic

that she believes in futures for everyone else,

threads their tomorrows with light,

while her own dreams sit quietly in the dark,

waiting for permission to exist.

Isn’t it ironic

how the ones who carry the most sorrow

learn to be gentle first

as if pain teaches tenderness,