The Long Tail of Fear
“It’s not your fault.
But it is your responsibility.”
A friend recently asked me a question that landed like a hammer:
“Why didn’t your mother protect you and your sisters?”
I had been explaining how I’ve lived most of my life with panic and fear—that it comes from the verbal, physical, and sexual abuse I experienced as a child.
My first reaction was almost defensive:
Yeah, why didn’t she?!
But then I paused. I’ve had years to reflect on the people my parents were—on the pain that shaped them long before they ever became parents.
A Father’s Distance
My father lost his own dad when he was nine. After that, my grandmother had a steady stream of men passing through her bed—something my dad and his three brothers lived with daily. That context helps me understand why my father was emotionally distant.
And then, there was Vietnam. Two years of trauma he never truly returned from. It made him angry. Distant. Sometimes violent. He could laugh and drink with you one moment and then explode the next. It’s hard to stay angry at someone who never had the tools to choose differently. If he’d had a choice, I think he would’ve made it.
He eventually found peace, or something like it, much later in life—like many men do in their sixties.
A Mother’s Silence
My mother’s story is just as tangled. The daughter of an alcoholic, abusive father—a man also shaped by his own wartime trauma in World War II and Korea—she grew up in a house where silence was safety. Her mother, my grandmother, was kind and loving, my favorite actually—but she was also enabling. She didn’t stop what could have been stopped.
So by the time my mom was in her teens, she was drinking and smoking heavily. By the time she was pregnant with me, she was chemically dependent. My wife and I used to make gallows humor about it: maybe I came out panicked because I was detoxing in the womb.
I've written more extensively about my parents’ relationship with alcohol here, if you're curious.
The Difference Between Being Safe and Feeling Safe
There is something profoundly destabilizing about growing up in a home where you do not feel safe.
Being safe and feeling safe are not the same.
A child can technically be in a dangerous situation, but if a parent shields them with emotional protection, the child might never internalize the trauma. They may still feel safe.
But when a child senses, “I'm about to go over a cliff,” and there’s no one to hold them, that terror can live inside them for the rest of their life.
Protect your children. There is no higher calling.
Triggered
A few months ago, I got into a big argument with my wife. I don’t remember what sparked it—probably because she was right—but I pushed back too long. We both got triggered.
She’s not a yeller, but when she’s angry, her words are surgical. Sharp. Precise. And as she let loose, something inside me snapped—or maybe switched off. Suddenly, I wasn’t a grown man anymore. I was eight years old, being shouted at, belt swinging, hurled onto the couch with the threat that if I didn’t get up and bend over, it was going to be worse.
It was worse.
I used to freeze in those moments. Play dead. Hope the storm would pass. And in the chair that night—arms wrapped around my knees—I just waited. I knew the attack would end. They always do.
What I didn’t know was that something old and buried had been ripped open. The panic, the adrenaline, the cortisol—it all came rushing in. And I had no idea what to do with it.
The Panic Season
Over the next six weeks, I spiraled.
Every night at 3 a.m., a light would flick on or a creak would sound, and I’d bolt awake—heart racing, chest tight, trembling. Full panic.
Sometimes it hit during the day. But mostly at night.
I learned how to manage it—mitigate it—not cure it. I curled under blankets on the floor, hid in closets, practiced box breathing, prayed. I exercised at odd hours. I tapped both collarbones rhythmically to calm my nervous system.
Sometimes it worked. Sometimes it didn’t.
Eventually, I got a prescription that helped regulate the flood of brain chemistry that was short-circuiting me.
And then, unexpectedly, I reconnected with an old friend. Their words had always made me feel safe. This time, they were a balm. There are no pharmaceuticals as powerful as being known and accepted by someone who sees you.
Letting Go, Opening Up
Here’s what I’ve learned:
Our power doesn’t come from control. It comes from connection.
It comes from being supported and from supporting others.
We have to be willing to be hurt if we want to be known. If our only goal is to shield our souls, we’ll never truly thrive.
It’s terrifying to love, to open, to trust—especially when your foundation was built on fear. But healing lives in that vulnerable space.
And I’m trying.
One breath at a time.
#reflection #essay #memoir #journal #osxs #100daystooffset #writing #confession #alcohol
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Thank you for coming here and walking through the garden of my mind. No day is as brilliant in its moment as it is gilded in memory. Embrace your experience and relish gorgeous recollection.
Into every life a little light will shine. Thank you for being my luminance in whatever capacity you may. Shine on, you brilliant souls!
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