Without Warning

It’s funny the way it snuck up on me without warning. There was no ellipses, no fresh page or change in the wind, no voice over to announce that the story line had shifted.

The story I was living inside subtly adjusted, while my external reality followed loyally behind.

It caught me off guard and took a while before I even became aware.

One day I was solid, sure, wholly independent. I was confident in my abilities and full of hope for the future. I knew that I was On My Way.

I knew that I could handle it.

I knew I would create it.

I knew that I owned every bit of it.

I knew that I contained whatever world I hoped for.

I was a star.

Maybe just a single speck in a sprinkling of a trillion – but I knew that my power was unique. My worlds were alive within me and all I had to do was let them flow.

I was there. The garden was starting to bloom. I could already smell the roses.

And then it all started to change.

Not suddenly. Not drastically. One tiny shift at a time.

And it changed in large part because of a man.

Not the way it’s happened before. Or even in the way you probably expect.

In a wildly unexpected kind of way.

In the way I was warned it could, through a thousand memes and a dozen books and probably a few videos too.

It changed in the way stories do when your oldest assumptions are repeatedly challenged, stripped of their justifications, and forced to stand naked before your heightened awareness.

It changed the way that children do the first time a raised hand is suddenly an offering rather than a slap. With every inappropriate response possible. Fear, anger, doubt, apathy, retreat, defense, dismissiveness. Or the first time their voice lands softly upon the spiked armour that was fashioned specifically to avoid its blows.

It changed by creating chaos where it didn’t make sense.

Storms where I swore the skies were clear.

Questions where it seemed the lesson was complete.

It changed by uprooting the roses just to reveal that the roots were still sick and the blooms wouldn’t have lasted anyway.

A solitary reflection on the difference between strength and hyper-independence.

A single choice to lean on someone where before I’d have propped my own self up.

A realization that I was far weaker after having done so, followed by the question of why.

A comfort where I expected judgment.

A gentleness where I was prepared for pain.

Consistency where there should have been free falls.

A hug that it seemed I either was never offered or never accepted, and the realization that both were the truth.

Just as I found my strength as a woman, a disheveled, tear-stained girl with dirt in her hair came rushing out and proceeded to tear every last shred of that strength apart.

And I can’t say I blame her.

Because she was abandoned long ago.

Oh I told myself it was healing when I faced old memories and cried them out in quiet solitude.

But healing would have been daring to look while someone else was in the room and learning how not to expect them to somehow make it worse.

I told myself it was healing when I traced every assumption in my mind and worked overtime to rewrite them in healthier ways.

But healing would have been coming back down into my body and facing my own nervous system and the world in front of me instead of hiding out in that tower above it all where nothing could really touch me.

The chasm between connection and isolation, between strength and vulnerability, between love and fear proved greater than it appeared when safely tucked inside a meditation, or spewing poetry as if words straight from the blooms could account for the trauma still stored in the roots.

One by one the lies started showing. My hard earned confidence dwindled to nothing and the insecurities and fears and anger and shame from the past rose in its place like a rotten corpse rising from the grave.

Suddenly I was like a ping-pong ball bouncing between the old and the new. Between what my mind had learned and what my body remembered. Between what I wanted and what I was.

I was never in control of my emotions. I had just learned how to tuck them away until the time and place was safe enough to feel them.

Down and down they’d get pushed until I could be alone and at ease. And then there, with no risk of being seen or heard or felt in all of that messy humanity, I branded the courage to finally face them as healing and patted myself on the back for a job well done.

But that wasn’t healing. That was hiding. Procrastination. Sanitation. I wasn’t learning how to manage my emotions in the moment, because I never felt them in the moment. I was just practicing the same things that little girl with dirt in her hair did so many years ago.

I was never strong. I was absent. Absent from my body. Absent from the moment. Absent from the world, living somewhere I thought it couldn’t touch.

I was never independent. I was so crippled by my desire for attachment that I anchored myself in the belief I didn’t need it. And then at the first hint of it, I’d grasp it so tightly as to nearly smother it.

On and on the hits kept on coming, a child’s rage storming the castle as one by one each brick that built it were starting to show.

And the walls are still coming down even as I write this. The work is still just started. I don’t fool myself into believing the skies have yet cleared. But the purpose is now evident and my hope and maybe some small confidence is restored.

It snuck up on me with no warning.

It altered my world in both subtle and carnal ways.

And it’s all in large part because of a man.

But not because of a man, really.

Because of gentleness.

Because when people say that gentleness can be fierce, this is what they mean.

©️2026 Cristen Writes