I have always been scared of love. Not the poetic, hand-on-heart kind of fear that makes you quote Emily Brontë in a low whisper, but the full-body, sweat-inducing terror of actually letting someone in. The kind of fear you feel standing on the edge of a dock, looking down at the dark, endless water, knowing you have to jump, not knowing what might be underneath.

Of course, this was never how I presented myself to the world. My outer shell could crack jokes at dinner parties and give sly, flirtatious smiles like a character straight out of a Tennessee Williams play. But inside? My internal monologue sounded less like Blanche DuBois and more like that one car alarm that won’t shut off at 3 a.m.—loud, repetitive, and absolutely panicked.

It wasn’t just romantic love I struggled with; I had a fear of vulnerability in all its forms. Letting anyone see the messy, unglamorous inner workings of my life felt like inviting them to stroll through my house in the middle of a renovation: drywall dust everywhere, paint samples stuck to the walls, wires where chandeliers should be. But here’s the thing: living behind that perfectly polished exterior starts to feel like a different kind of scary. When “fine” is the only word you can bring yourself to say, the silence grows louder.

This is the story of how I stopped being scared to jump—for love, yes, but also to share the less curated parts of myself. And while I’m no Brene Brown, I can promise you this: if I can do it, so can you.

Step One: Meet Your Fear on Neutral Ground

It started small. Not life-changing leaps into the deep end, but dipping my toes in the kiddie pool.

Savannah, if you’ve ever been, is a town that runs on imagery: grand fountains in the town square, rose petal pathways leading up to stately doors, perfectly frosted wedding cakes in a shop window. This aesthetic doesn’t leave much room for mess. I’d grown up under the Spanish moss feeling like I had to match the picture-perfect backdrop—until one sticky July, when somewhere between a thunderstorm and a glass of sweet tea that was way too much sugar and not nearly enough tea, I broke the rules.

I showed a boy (fine, a man who smelled like sawdust and looked like he knew how to strip old wallpaper) some of my writing. Early, sloppy drafts I hadn’t written to impress anyone. He said something that stuck: “It doesn’t have to be perfect to mean something.”

That was the first crack in my armor. I wasn’t diving headfirst into deep waters, but I’d waded in far enough to feel like I could breathe. And sometimes, breathing is enough of a start.

Step Two: Invite the Chaos

There’s something Southern about assuming everything important happens at the table. For me, the table in question was in my childhood home—the kind with claw feet and a finish polished to within an inch of its life. My parents were hosting a dinner party (of course), and in the midst of the faded wine glasses, platters of pecan-crusted something-or-other, and enough deeply probing questions from my parents’ friends to fill an interrogation room, I blurted out that I was seeing someone.

To my family, this wasn’t the shocking part. The shocking part was that I hadn’t already given them an annotated dossier about the man. My mom—bless her—tried to fill the silence with an enthusiastic, “Well, what can you tell us about him?” But there was something freeing about not having all the answers. I didn’t know where it was going, what he wanted, or what cute nicknames we’d eventually settle on. And for once, that didn’t terrify me.

My therapist once told me (yes, I was seeing a therapist, because this kind of lesson doesn’t get learned on porches in the moonlight): “You can’t control intimacy, but you can control how much time you spend trying to avoid it.”

Letting people into the chaos—whether it’s your messy emotions, your very-un-Savannah-like cluttered desk, or your uncertainty about where a relationship is heading—feels hard in the moment. But once you’re in it, the fear hits less like gale-force wind and more like a summer breeze. You survived it. And you’re freer for it.

Step Three: Take the Jump, Even If You Face-Plant

Eventually, I had to go big. I was dating someone new—someone who didn’t have the unpolished charm of a weathered carpenter but instead shared my love of art, playful debates, and Sunday mornings wandering the local farmer’s market. Suddenly, I wasn’t terrified just of them seeing me for who I was; I was terrified of them leaving after they did.

But here’s the issue with standing at that metaphorical dock: stay still too long, and you trick yourself into thinking it’s safer there. So I invited him to see the parts of me that scared me the most. I opened up about past heartbreaks and my restless craving for certainty. He didn’t cringe, didn’t bolt, just laughed gently and said, “I think that’s called being human.”

And when the survival instinct to backpedal and make it less personal kicked in, I leaned further in instead. Vulnerability has this funny way of snowballing—once you try it, you can’t entirely convince yourself to stop.

By the time he met my parents (the same parents who had grilled me during that sweltering August dinner), I was ready. Not ready as in “I have it all figured out now,” but ready as in: If the roof caves in or the chaos spills out of me in rivulets, I will not crumble over it.

Lessons in Letting Go

What started as a fear of love turned into a lesson about my relationship with myself. Because here’s the thing they don’t always teach us in sprawling antebellum homes with chandeliers and perfect parlor rooms: the charm of what’s real often outweighs the shine of what’s perfect.

Here’s what I’ve learned, broken down for easy reading (I do this for you, dear reader, not me):

  • Start Small. Share your thoughts, feelings, or messy truths a little at a time. You don’t have to flood the levee at once.
  • Make Room for Mystery. You don’t need to know the end of the story before it starts. That’s where the magic lives.
  • Give Yourself Grace. Vulnerability doesn’t get a grade. You don’t have to do it “right”; you just have to do it.
  • Stay Curious. About yourself, your fears, and the people you’re connecting with. “Why does this scare me?” is a question worth asking.

Jumping doesn’t guarantee a perfect swan dive, but I can promise you this: the water isn’t nearly as cold as you think it is.

Life and love are messy, friends, and so am I. But I’d rather splash around in the real than stand dry and pristine forever. If there’s anything Southern Gothic literature has taught me—it’s that beauty lies in imperfection and courage. Turns out, my fear wasn’t something to conquer but something to befriend.

Now, what are you waiting for? The water’s fine.