I Don’t Live There Anymore

I spend a lot of mornings on my front porch.
I’m an early riser anyway, but some mornings I’m out there early enough that my day begins under the stars. I sit in the darkness, drink my coffee, and eventually watch the sky begin to change.

This morning was one of those mornings.
Except this morning, I wasn’t peaceful.
I was anxious.

Not just worried or thinking too much. I could feel anxiety moving through my entire body.
The tightness.
The restless energy.
The feeling that I needed to run somewhere, even though there was nowhere to go.
The breathing that never quite felt like a full breath.

And as I sat there trying to bring myself back to the present moment, I had a realization.
I used to live like this.

Not occasionally.
Not during particularly difficult moments.
This used to be my normal.

There was a time in my life when my nervous system existed in a nearly constant state of anticipating what might happen next. I was always thinking ahead, preparing, worrying, trying to control outcomes, trying to make sure I would be okay.
When you live somewhere long enough, even discomfort can begin to feel familiar.
You don’t necessarily realize how much tension you’re carrying when you’ve been carrying it for years.

But this morning, I realized something has changed.
Because now I notice it.
Now anxiety feels uncomfortable enough that something inside me immediately says:
I don’t want to live here.

And maybe that is part of healing that we don’t talk about enough.

We often imagine healing as reaching a place where the old feelings never return.
Where anxiety disappears.
Where old patterns stop showing up.
Where we become so healed that nothing can pull us back into the places we worked so hard to leave.

But I don’t think healing always works like that.
Sometimes life gets hard again.
Sometimes uncertainty returns.
Sometimes an old wound gets touched.
Sometimes our nervous system remembers a survival strategy long before our conscious mind has figured out what is happening.
And suddenly, we find ourselves standing somewhere familiar.

The difference is that we recognize it now.
We know this place.
And we also know we don’t live here anymore.

That was the realization sitting on my porch this morning.

The anxiety itself wasn’t evidence that I had somehow gone backwards.
My awareness of it was evidence of how much had changed.

There was once a version of me who could live inside this level of anxiety every day because she had learned how to survive there.
The woman sitting on the porch this morning couldn’t.

And strangely, I think that’s growth.

Not because anxiety is something I should fear or fight.
But because peace has become familiar enough that I notice when I’ve moved away from it.

Safety has become familiar enough that my body recognizes when it doesn’t feel safe.
Presence has become familiar enough that I notice when my mind starts trying to live ten steps ahead.

Maybe healing isn’t never returning to the old places.
Maybe healing is returning and realizing:
This doesn’t feel like home anymore.

So I sat there.
Under the stars.
I reminded myself that I didn’t have to solve everything that morning.
I couldn’t control every outcome.
I couldn’t guarantee what would happen next.

But I could come back to what was actually happening in that moment.
My breath.
My body.
The porch beneath me.
The morning unfolding around me.

And eventually, the sky began to change.
It always does.

The darkness didn’t disappear all at once. The horizon simply became a little lighter, and then a little lighter again.
Until eventually, the sun came up.

There was something about watching that happen while sitting inside my own uncertainty that felt important.
Because transition can feel like that too.

Sometimes we know something is changing before we can see where we’re going.
Sometimes we are standing between what was and what will be.
Sometimes all we can see is darkness, even though somewhere beyond the horizon the light is already coming.

Maybe coming home to yourself isn’t about arriving at some permanent state of peace.
Maybe it’s learning how to recognize when you’ve wandered away from yourself.
And knowing how to find your way back.
Again.
And again.
And again.
Until one day you realize the place you once survived in no longer feels like somewhere you belong.

A question for reflection:
What once felt normal to you that no longer feels like home?