The Courage to Enter the Room Again

There is a room I return to often.
It lives somewhere between memory and breath —
an elegant, white-light room with soft air and high ceilings that hold quiet like a large all white ballroom.
The light pours in through tall windows, touching the edges of everything without asking for permission.
There’s no noise here. No judgment. No mirrors reflecting back what others see.
Just stillness, and me.

This is where I feel safe - a place I come to remember who I am before I walk into the rooms that test it.

Because out there — in the outer rooms, mostly  circles tied to my child’s small world — I carry a different kind of presence.
The smile stays, but the muscles underneath it tighten.
There’s a knot that lives just below my ribs —
a tangle of restraint, vigilance, and all the swallowed sentences that never found air.

That’s the part of me that fears repercussion.
That knows how quickly being different can translate to being difficult.
That has learned, in certain rooms, authenticity can cost more than it earns.

And so, I manage perception like a fragile vase.

And yet—beneath the surface politeness, something clenches.
A small revolt begins in the gut.
Because every time I silence my essence to fit, I start to forget how to breathe as myself.

It’s about proximity — the people bound to you through circumstance, not choice.

That’s what makes the stakes different.

Because it’s no longer just my belonging on the line — it’s hers, it’s business, it’s everything but soul.

So I try to play it safe.
But safety built on self-abandonment is a kind of slow suffocation.
Because what starts as protection soon becomes performance.
And that, I’ve learned, is not the same as peace.

There’s a question I ask myself in those moments of tightening:
At what point does protection become betrayal?

Because there’s a quiet grief in realizing that you can’t be fully yourself everywhere —
but there’s also wisdom in learning that you don’t have to be.

Being yourself doesn’t mean exposing every layer.
It means knowing which ones belong where.
It’s not muting your truth — it’s curating your presence.

Not all rooms deserve your essence.
Some only require your participation.
And that’s not inauthenticity. That’s discernment.

Courage, I’m learning, is not loud.
It’s not walking in to prove a point.
It’s walking in again — open, grounded, but no longer porous.

It’s deciding that other people’s projections can slide off like rain on glass.
It’s trusting that not everyone will like you, and allowing that truth to land without bitterness.

It’s the quiet confidence of knowing:
I belong here because I’m here.
And that’s enough.

Sometimes courage looks like leaning into discomfort — meeting the tension with grace instead of defence.
It’s remembering that integrity isn’t threatened by small talk; it just doesn’t live there.
And that layered selfhood is not a flaw — it’s a form of wisdom.

Because lightness, I’ve realized, isn’t avoidance.
It’s mastery.
It’s the freedom to move through the world without letting it stain you.

So when I feel that old knot tighten, I try each day to remember - toI return — in my mind — to the white room.
The one with the soft light and the quiet walls.
The one that reminds me who I am before anyone asks me to edit it.

I try. And its hard. But I try.

And in that stillness, I remember:

Wholeness was never theirs to grant me.