The fear that returns

The Fear That Returns Sana, I don’t know how to explain this in a way that feels complete, but I feel you in these moments—in the spaces where fear quietly takes over. Something happened recently. A small moment, something that passed in seconds—but it stayed. And since then, I’ve been struggling to step outside, to walk along the road, to exist in the middle of moving traffic. My body resists in ways my mind cannot always justify. And that’s when I recognized it again— Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder. It has returned, or maybe it never really left. The same fear. The same tightness in my chest. The same irrational but overpowering sense that something is about to go wrong. It’s not logical, and yet it feels completely real. It sits in my mind, quietly at first, and then suddenly loud—sending waves through my body when something triggers it. It reminds me of those days in the hospital with you. Every time my phone rang. Every time someone said, “any updates?” Those words alone would send a shiver down my spine. My heart would race before I even knew what I was about to hear. I lived in a constant state of waiting—waiting for news, bracing for impact. And now, somehow, my body remembers before I do. I recently read something about how no one talks about the exhaustion of grief. And it’s true. No one really speaks about how tiring it is to carry this every single day. Not just emotionally—but physically. The way your body holds onto fear. The way your mind replays, anticipates, protects, and sometimes traps you. PTSD is real. And in my experience, it is one of the hardest things to live with. Because it doesn’t always make sense. It creates fear where there may be none. It brings the past into the present without warning. It sends impulses through your brain and body before you can reason your way out of them. You know you are safe, and yet, something inside you refuses to believe it. And in those moments, Sana, I think of you. I think about the strength you carried in the face of uncertainty. I think about how you held yourself with a quiet courage, even when things were unclear, even when the unknown stood right in front of you. I wish I could borrow that from you now. Because some days, just stepping outside feels like a battle. Some days, the world feels too loud, too fast, too unpredictable. And yet, I keep trying. Maybe that is what this journey is—not the absence of fear, but learning to move through it, slowly, gently, even when it doesn’t make sense. I miss you in these moments. I miss the calm you brought into chaos. I miss the way your presence made things feel just a little more steady. And maybe, in writing this, I am trying to find that steadiness again.