🌞 A Nice Story — On Fear, Solitude & The Sea

Today, I feel like...

Good. It’s summer, and the sun helps with the mood. The sky is soft and open above the Netherlands — not too hot, not too cold. Twenty-five degrees of just-right warmth, enough to feel alive again.
And yet, as I watch the sun shine through the windows, I sit indoors, still.
Not because I don’t want to go out...
But because I can’t.

There is nothing holding me back — except me.

I wish I could go outside and enjoy the city. Take a walk. Breathe. Feel the rhythm of the world in motion. But I’ve never gone out alone. Not really. I always walked toward someone. I always returned to someone. But never just with myself.

And now, even when I move my leg, just to make a step —
I freeze.
I feel stuck.
My body says no.

It feels like standing at the bottom of a massive mountain. I can see the top, shining with light. I can even imagine how it would feel to stand there — free, strong, grounded. But the very first step feels impossible. It feels like death.

Because being alone is one of my biggest fears

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Photo by Stormseeker 

🌊 The Fear of Being Alone

I fear that if I step outside alone, something might unravel inside me.
Not because the world is dangerous — but because my own feelings might flood in too fast, too deep.

I fear death, not as an ending, but as a vanishing.
A drifting into silence where no one sees me go.
Where I dissolve quietly, unnoticed.
Where I am utterly, unbearably alone.

Sometimes I wonder if this fear began in the sea.

There’s a story I heard — maybe true, maybe not — of my father tossing me into the water as a baby,
thinking I’d learn to swim.
But I didn’t learn to swim that day.

What I may have learned was this:
I can be thrown.
I can be overwhelmed.
And no one might come for me.

That kind of lesson doesn’t live in memory — it lives in the body.
It seeps below language, below logic, into the quiet architecture of fear.
And it doesn’t stay at the shoreline.

It follows you.
Into your room.
Into your choices.
Into your future.

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👁️ Maybe It’s Also This...

Maybe I’m afraid that if I am alone — truly alone — I will become invisible.
Unseen.
Forgotten.

Maybe I still ache for a kind of validation I never received from a parent.
A glance that said, “I see you. You matter.”
And if no one is there to say it, I fear I might vanish.

There’s probably more than one reason. Maybe it’s the abandonment wounds. Maybe it’s my sensitive nervous system. Maybe it's something else entirely — but in the end, what matters is how I hold it now.

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🧸 Meeting My Inner Child

                                                                                                                                        Photo by With Elli

The part of me who freezes when I try to step outside 

— she’s not lazy or broken. She’s

protecting me. She remembers the fear, even when I don’t.

And so I begin to speak to her.

“Hi little Elli…
I see you.
You were so small when they threw you in the sea.
You didn’t deserve that. You needed arms, not water.
You’re scared, and I get it now.
But you’re not alone anymore.
I’m here now. And I will stay.”                                                                                                                       

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💛 Not a Mountain, But a Seed

                                                                                                               Photo by Michiel Annaert  

Maybe I don’t have to climb a mountain today.

Maybe healing isn’t about grand gestures — maybe it starts with one breath.
One shoe on. One open window. One warm voice — even if it’s my own.

I can imagine a glowing rope tied gently around my waist, connecting me to something real. Something that holds me even when I drift. Something that whispers:

You may feel alone, but you are never truly lost.

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🌱 Just One Soft Step

I don’t have all the answers. But I’m learning to ask the right questions.

What if being alone doesn’t mean being unloved?
What if I can learn to belong to myself, softly, slowly — like the sun finding its way back through the clouds?

What if going outside isn’t the goal — but simply feeling safe enough to try?

And what if — just maybe — there’s no rush?
Just breath.
Just kindness.
Just me, and a very patient kind of love.

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🕊️ For anyone who also feels the mountain, the sea, or the fear of being unseen — you are not alone. You are held, even now.

With Elli