When fear speaks

I am writing this column because I know what fear can do to young people.

- ANNA MAE YU LAMENTILLO

I have watched it bend their posture before it bends their future, teaching them to shrink long before anyone tells them to.Fear does not announce itself as danger at first. It often arrives disguised as caution, responsibility, or realism. By the time you realize it has taken hold, it has already begun editing your life.

Fear changed my life quietly. It taught me how to stay alert even when nothing was happening, how to replay conversations long after they ended, searching for mistakes. It made me attentive to tone, to silence, to what was left unsaid. Fear convinced me that safety came from anticipation, that if I could imagine every possible outcome, I could avoid pain. What it did not tell me was that constant vigilance is its own kind of prison.