What Calm Actually Costs

I had to finally stop feeding my addiction to drama.

For most of my life, being reactive made me feel alive. As long as something was going on, I had purpose. Something to fix. Something to talk about. Something to gossip about. Someone to help while I adorned my glitter cape… ever ready and always hoping for outward adoration.

Peace felt empty. Quiet felt wrong. Stillness felt dangerous. I confused calm with boredom, and boredom with death.

I lived with what I call a shark mentality. If I stopped moving, producing, or outputting, I would die.

Maybe it wasn’t death I feared. Perhaps it was ego death after all.

Because slowing down meant I had to see myself without motion. Without performance and without applause.

After years of long-term recovery, I had to get brutally honest about what self-will run riot actually looked like in my life. How it shaped my choices, my reactions, my thoughts, my decisions.

Calm cost me my addiction to being liked.

I had to let go of the fantasy of a big friend group. Of being everywhere. Of being important to everyone. I had to scale back and sit in the discomfort long enough for something new to form.

I had to start doing things for my own well-being. Not as a reward for helping others, but as a requirement for staying sane.

I had to learn to say no, and I did it badly at first. I overexplained and worried I sounded rude. I said no when I meant yes and said yes when I meant no. I straight-up ghosted when things got hard.

All of it is messy. All of it human.

It was a cocoon phase. Awkward. Quiet. And necessary.

I read books on boundaries and devoured podcasts on people-pleasing recovery. I leaned on my sponsor and the women who showed me how to live better.

Calm cost me my vanity.

Metrics mattered less. Being seen mattered less. Self-promotion softened, and authenticity took over. No makeup and sweatpants. A body no longer trying to convince anyone of anything. For someone who spent her life judging her insides by other people’s outsides, this mattered more than it sounds.

Calm cost me access.

I had to decide who to keep close, who to keep at arm’s length, and who no longer gets access to my energy. Period. And I had to grieve those relationships, as sick as some of them were.

I had to define my values. Not borrowed ones. Not inherited ones. Mine.

Agency, sovereignty, and autonomy. These became non-negotiable.

Spiritually, I had to remember this. Attraction over promotion.

Less proving to you. More being with me. Less busy to cover up my fears. More grounded in my own center. These became my mantras and my goals.

I stopped trying to be everything to everyone, and something surprising happened. The people who truly loved me cheered. The ones who benefited from the old version quietly disappeared.

Calm cost me chaos. And it gave me discernment.

I went deeper into my spiritual life. Breathwork, therapy, meditation, and journaling. These tools bring me back to center instead of pulling me outward.

I learned I don’t have to be everywhere. I don’t have to carry everything. I don’t have to stay loud to stay alive.

Calm isn’t passive. It’s chosen, paid for, and protected.

It asks one brave question every day.
What can I let go of, so I can stay?

Love,
Heather