A reflection on anxiety, uncertainty, and the search for a safe place
Anxiety- it hums beneath everything, a single note playing in the background, one my body cannot forget. It is always there. Sometimes I lose track of it briefly: at work, in conversation, or while moving through the endless chores of the day. Laundry—so many piles of laundry—one after another. Food to prepare. Groceries to list and to shop for, to carry home, and to put away.
The stores are crowded with people, each carrying energy and a humming of their own. The roads are filled with aggressive drivers, and I am never quite sure what they will do next. Getting anywhere feels like moving through molasses: the grocery store, work, therapies and classes for my daughter, and then the long journey back through traffic.
At home, the groceries must be arranged in their proper places. The television blares. A phone streams something from YouTube at the other end of the room. Flies that have somehow found their way inside buzz through an artificial jungle of furniture, clothes, food, and glowing devices. There are no trees here. No green. No quiet nature.
Outside, the neighborhood has its own noise—the extra cars spilling into the street, the harsh engines waking everyone in the early morning or late at night, the crowdedness of lives pressing against one another.
No wonder I am anxious.
But that is only the external noise, the aggressiveness and sharp edges of the world. There is another layer beneath it: the problems of life itself.
And there are the kids I worry about constantly. There is my daughter, who has special needs, and my endless desire to help her grow, thrive, and find her way. There is a job that provides the basics, and for which I am grateful, even as I sometimes wonder, what am I doing with my life here? This is not what I worked toward.
Then I think of the many people who do not have work, and I remind myself that I am fortunate. At least I have a job, health insurance, and can food on the table—an identity beyond my family and my children. Yet sometimes this life feels like the skeleton of what I once dreamed of, the scattered debris of old hopes.
There is also the uncertainty of jobs- fears of AI taking over – and the world in chaos with climate change, wars and conflicts, inflation, and so much more. More stressors. Sharp edge. I feel as though I have become flat from moving through so many of them, flattening myself because it seems like the only way not to be pierced. Lie low. Stay still. Do not breathe, not too deep.
It feels as though I have no agency, no will. How is any of this supposed to make sense? I have almost given up the pretense that I am going anywhere. Mostly, I am carried by the waves, pushed this way and that, my life dictated by forces I can barely name. I pull myself above the water just enough to breathe.
Sometimes I am surprised that I make it through the day.
I tell myself—and I tell my body—that everything is okay for now. Why are you overreacting? I ask. Life here is still not as hard as it was back home in Nepal. There are quiet moments, safe spaces, places where I can breathe. But even as I say this, I understand what has changed. In Nepal, I still had hope—naïve hope, perhaps—that one day I would escape that place, that situation. And I did escape, or so I thought, only to arrive somewhere else with anxieties, worries, and pain of its own. They are different here, but they remain. Now I feel as though I am running out of both time and hope, and a quieter fear begins to settle in: perhaps this is simply life—the human experience we are all here to endure.
And still, it is beautiful at times. Beauty arrives in the smallest of things: morning coffee, a hike, a rare quiet night when the silence lets me sleep. It lives in my children’s unexpected words and phrases, in the little things they say and do, and in every small achievement that opens another window into who they are becoming. It is there in the relationships I can build and cherish, in each modest step toward building a life that I want. A life filled with nature, writing, travel-adventures big and small.
I am grateful for what I have and don’t have and for all I have and have not lived through. Perhaps this is the beauty of it: walking among thorns day after day, and then, occasionally, seeing a rose. You lean toward it, breathe it in, and recognize the moment before it passes.
One day, my therapist asked, “What is your safe place?”
I saw hills—mounds and mounds of them, clean and green. I was alone outside a cottage, sitting in a large white chair and looking out into the open space. The light was bright, but a gentle breeze moved through it. There were no neighbors, no one nearby. No engines, no screens, no demands. Nothing pressing against me.
Just the hills, the breeze, the quiet—and little old me- my safe space, my home.