The Moment I Realized I Wasn’t Afraid of Women — I Was Afraid of Me
I remember one night in Chicago, walking home after the gym. Cold wind, hoodie up, headphones in. I saw this girl at the crosswalk — exactly my type. Soft eyes. Latina. Cute as hell. She looked at me, then looked again. And I did nothing. I don’t know why that moment hit harder than others, but it did. I kept walking, but my chest started tightening. Not anxiety — shame. It wasn’t about her. It was about me. By the time I got to my apartment, the silence in my room felt louder than the street. I sat on my bed, shoes still on, and I remember thinking: “Why the fuck didn’t I go talk to her? What am I scared of?” And it was weird — because it wasn’t the fear of rejection. I’ve been rejected a hundred times. It didn’t kill me. It was something nastier. It was that I didn’t trust myself. I didn’t trust that I could handle the moment. Didn’t trust that I could say something real. Didn’t trust that I was enough in that exact state I was in. I kept playing out this fantasy in my head that I needed to be “on.” More charismatic. More confident. More put together. More something. And every time I waited for that “better version” of myself to show up, I abandoned the version that was actually here. That’s what hurt. It felt like leaving a younger version of me behind at the crosswalk while I walked away pretending it didn’t matter. But it did. It always did. The regret wasn’t from missing the girl. It was from betraying myself — again. And that night, I finally admitted it: I wasn’t scared of her reaction. I was scared of facing the part of me that didn’t feel worthy of being chosen. That realization fucking stung. But it also freed me. Because the thing I was running from wasn’t women — it was my own reflection in those moments. And once I decided to stop running… once I told myself, “Even if I stutter… even if I tremble… even if it’s messy… I’m still going,” That decision didn’t make me fearless. It made me honest. I literally shook my body out in place, like I was resetting my nervous system.