The Day Fear Moved into My Body:

Fear moved into my body before I had language for fear. My first memory of life is violence.

I was about two years old. Small enough that the world still felt oversized. I remember my father assaulting my mother while they were in front of me, and I remember watching it like my body froze but my eyes didn’t. I don’t remember crying. But I remember screaming “STOP! DON’T DO THAT”, and I remember watching. That image burned itself into me before I understood what love was supposed to look like. But the pain wasn’t yet mine.

A few months later, they broke up. And for a long time, I didn’t consciously feel afraid. Not in the way people talk about fear. It lived somewhere deeper than memory — in my nervous system, in my cells, in the part of me that learned early that the people who are supposed to protect you can also be the ones who hurt you.

When I was five, my father married his wife, and the house became a war zone soaked in alcohol. They drank heavily for years. I witnessed domestic violence regularly, on both their parts — screaming matches that shook the walls, doors broken off hinges, bruises on their bodies the next day that everyone pretended not to see. That fear was loud and chaotic, but it wasn’t yet mine. I was watching it happen, not realizing it was training me.

That came later.

My father didn’t put his hands on me until I was eleven — the summer before my mom died.

One night, my cousin and I were smoking a cigarette on the trampoline while my dad was at the bar. The old man next door saw us through the window. The next day, he told my father. When my dad confronted me, I lied. Not because I was rebellious — but because fear had already taught me that truth can be dangerous.

He slapped me across the face. The same way he slapped my mother. The same way he slapped his wife. He asked me again, naturally out of fear, I lied again. So, he slapped me again.

That was the moment fear stopped being something I witnessed and became something that entered my body. It sank in deep and fast. My nervous system locked it in. I remember thinking, This can happen to me now. I remember understanding, without words, that I had crossed some invisible line.

When he asked me a third time, I told the truth. He looked me in the eyes and told me not to let it happen again, then told me to get the fuck out of his face. And something inside me broke open and shut at the same time.

What makes this harder — what still guts me — is that this was not the father I grew up with. Before that moment, he was my best friend. After my parents split, I saw him every other weekend. He never spanked me. Never raised a hand to me. We went to the park. Read books. Watched movies. Went on daddy-daughter dates. He was safe. He was fun. He was someone I loved without fear.

I never — not once — imagined he would put his hands on me. Until he did.

After my mom died, I moved back in with him, and everything changed. And when I say everything, I mean the air, the rules, the way I existed in my own body. I believe now that while my mother was alive, there were limits he wouldn’t cross. Once she was gone, those limits disappeared. The abuse escalated. The fear deepened. And the father I thought I knew vanished. That betrayal — the whiplash between who he was and who he became — is what still echoes the loudest.

Fear didn’t arrive all at once. It layered itself over years. It taught me to stay hyper-aware, hyper-compliant, hyper-quiet. I learned how to read moods before words. I learned how to disappear in plain sight. I learned how to survive by shrinking. Fear became my compass, even when the danger wasn’t obvious anymore.

And that fear didn’t stay in childhood. It followed me into adulthood. Into relationships. Into my sense of self. Into the ways I coped, numbed, and tried to outrun what lived inside me. This story isn’t about shock value. It’s about truth.

About naming the moment fear took up residence in my body — so it can finally be confronted instead of silently obeyed. Fear shaped me. But it does not get to own me. This is where I start telling the truth — not to bleed out on the page, but to heal at the root.

🕊️ Closing Prayer

God, I bring You the memories I didn’t have words for. The moments my body remembers even when my mind tries to forget. The fear that entered me too early and stayed too long. I bring You the little girl who learned to brace instead of rest, who learned silence instead of safety, who learned that love could turn violent without warning.

Sit with her, Lord. Cover the places where protection failed. Untangle what fear taught me from who You say I am. Heal what shaped my nervous system. Release what no longer belongs in my body. Give me the courage to tell the truth without shame and the grace to heal without minimizing the harm.

Break the cycles I didn’t choose but refuse to pass down. Restore what fear tried to steal. And teach me how to live — not braced, not shrinking — but rooted, held, and free.

Amen.

XOXO, The Healing Wildflower