The World Is Bigger Than My Fears

I lived for years inside a narrowing room,
a place where danger wore familiar faces
and safety was a rumor carried on the wind.

I mistook the walls for the world.
I mistook my vigilance for truth.
I mistook my childhood lens
for the shape of reality itself.

But the world is bigger than my fears.
It always was.
I just wasn’t safe enough to see it yet.

There is sky that stretches beyond the memories
that trained me to shrink.
There are people whose kindness does not collapse
when I’m tired,
whose moods do not tilt
because I breathed wrong or existed.

There is a self in me
who watches quietly
from a place untouched by terror—
the part who knew, even then,
that the world was wider
than the house where I learned to disappear.

And now, when the old thoughts whisper,
“Stay small, stay alert, stay afraid,”
I answer softly:

“I don’t have to. Not anymore.
The world is bigger than my fears.”

I am a part of that world—
a world far larger
than the voices that taught me to hide.
A world that holds mountains, mornings,
and people who do not wish me harm.

A world wide enough
for all the versions of me to breathe.

A world
that was there
all along.