I am afraid of heights.
Not in an abstract way. In a very real, physical, ridiculous sort of way.
If I stand on a small stepladder to change a lightbulb or water plants that are too high to reach, I can literally feel the fear moving through my body.
My heart rate speeds up.
My breathing changes.
My legs wobble.
I become hyper-aware of balance and gravity and all the ways things can go wrong.
I am careful to make sure the ladder is level. I look for something steady to hold onto. I move slowly and deliberately.
And still, the fear arrives.
Logically, I know I am more likely to injure myself driving to the supermarket than I am standing three steps up a little household ladder. I know statistically the risk is tiny. I even once looked up the Irish Health and Safety Authority figures on ladder accidents to try and reason with myself.
It made absolutely no difference.
Fear does not always respond to logic.
What fascinates me is that despite the fear, I still use the ladder.
I don’t avoid it completely. I don’t abandon the task. I just endure the discomfort while quietly hoping not to fall.
Lately, I’ve begun to wonder how much of my life has been lived exactly like that.
For years I told myself I was afraid of success.
I avoided opportunities I was fully capable of handling. I stayed quiet when I could have spoken up. I held myself back professionally. I made myself smaller socially. I questioned myself endlessly.
At times I convinced myself it was humility.
At other times I called it practicality.
Sometimes I dressed it up as realism.
But I am beginning to realise that much of it was not humility at all.
It was fear.
Not necessarily fear of succeeding.
Fear of being seen.
Fear of stepping too far out into the open and having the ground disappear beneath me.
Fear of finally reaching for something fully and publicly and then falling.
When I look back honestly, I can see how often I have kept myself safe by keeping myself small.
Safe from judgement. Safe from criticism. Safe from disappointment. Safe from humiliation. Safe from being noticed.
If I never fully stepped forward, then no one could fully reject me.
That is not a comfortable thing to admit.
For most of my life, survival became the goal.
Not thriving. Not flourishing. Not building something expansive.
Just surviving.
Keeping the bills paid. Keeping moving. Keeping going. Keeping everyone else okay.
There is a particular kind of exhaustion that comes from spending decades trying not to become a burden.
I think many women understand that exhaustion.
Particularly women who have spent years being the dependable one, the capable one, the one who copes. The one whose own needs are always unseen.
The irony is that while trying so hard to protect myself from failure, I also protected myself from visibility, opportunity, recognition and joy.
I have spent years questioning my abilities while simultaneously helping other people believe in theirs.
I have championed others loudly while whispering over myself.
I have minimised my own achievements because they never looked impressive enough beside someone else’s version of success.
No property portfolio. No corporate title. No flashy business growth story. No neat upward trajectory.
And yet, when I strip away the comparisons and the noise, I can also see this:
I have kept myself going.
For forty years. I grew up quite young and very quickly.
I have adapted and readapted; rebuilt and reshaped things more times than I can count.
I have worked through grief, uncertainty, single parenting, financial stress, anxiety and exhaustion.
I have continued to show up for people.
That is not failure.
It may not look shiny online.
It may not fit neatly into society’s preferred narrative of success.
But it is not failure.
I think the most painful realisation has been understanding that somewhere along the way I began to believe that I needed to earn visibility.
That I needed to become successful enough before I was allowed to speak.
Wise enough. Polished enough. Accomplished enough. Healed enough.
But perhaps the point is not to emerge at the end of life with a perfectly tied-up story.
Perhaps the point is simply to stop hiding while living it.
I still don’t like ladders.
I still wobble.
I still feel the surge of panic in my chest when I stand too high off the ground.
But I climb them anyway.
And maybe that is the whole point.
Courage is not the absence of fear.
Sometimes courage is simply refusing to remain motionless.
I haven’t spent my life failing.
I’ve spent much of it trying to stay safe.
I think I’m finally ready to stop confusing the two.
WORD COUNT: 792 words
DATE: 8th December 2025
© SineadCKavanagh