When Safety and Freedom Switched Places

I had been watched my entire life by someone.

So when I finally found myself alone, truly alone, the idea didn’t feel peaceful at all.

It terrified me.

At first, I told myself the fear was about practical things. Small, reasonable concerns. I lose my keys. I misplace my phone. What would I do if there was no one there to help me find them?

So I solved that. I bought tracker tags for my keys and my phone. Now, when I misplace them, I open an app and they tell me exactly where everything is. Problem handled.

But the fear didn’t go away.

Then it shifted.

I started worrying about what would happen if something went wrong while I was alone. If I was driving somewhere and had an accident. If I fell. If I needed help.

Who would know?

That question scared me more than I wanted to admit. I had never lived without someone knowing where I was, not to watch me, but to make sure I was safe. I realized I had never existed without that quiet awareness in the background. Not constant checking. Just the sense that someone knew.

So I created a bridge.

I started having a daily phone call with my son. Not because he needed to track me, and not because I was handing him responsibility for me. But because it grounded me to choose connection in a healthy, mutual way. I wasn’t reporting my whereabouts. I wasn’t being watched.

I was reminding my nervous system that being alone didn’t mean being abandoned.

The shift didn’t happen all at once.

It happened one day when I was driving.I was stopped at a red light, and I looked up through the moonroof of my car. The sky was open and impossibly beautiful. And suddenly, something washed over me that I had never felt before.

Peace.

Not relief. Not distraction.

Peace.

And with it came a realization so sudden it almost took my breath away. No one was watching me. No one was monitoring where I was going or why. No one needed an explanation. No one expected justification.

I could go anywhere.

I could do anything I wanted.

I didn’t have to ask permission. I didn’t have to explain myself. I didn’t have to manage anyone else’s comfort.

I could do whatever the fuck I wanted.

And no one was ever going to stop me again.

I remember thinking, I don’t even have to go home.

I had my dogs in the car. I could just keep driving. I could go wherever the road took me.

For the first time in my life, being unwatched didn’t feel dangerous.

It felt exhilarating.

Thrilling.

Liberating in a way I didn’t know was possible.

Something had shifted.

Not just in how I thought about it, but in how it felt in my body. The fear had been replaced with freedom. And in that moment, I understood something I had never understood before.

The absence of control isn’t emptiness.

It’s space.

And space is where you finally get to choose.