Field Note 13: You Can Kill Yourself and Someone Else With Your Fear

You Can Kill Yourself and Someone Else With Your Fear

Let me tell you about the time my friend Fran tried to drown me on her own birthday.

It was her 40th. We took her to Jamaica to celebrate her, because that is what you do for the women you love, you build them a whole moment and hand it to them wrapped in sunlight. We ended up in a river off a bank, and I was walking her through the water the same way I walk my nieces through anything new, slow, steady, narrating every step so fear never gets a running start.

"Fran," I said, "right now you can feel your feet. In a second you won't be able to. Don't panic. You have your life jacket on. You are going to float. We are just going to float over to the wall together."

The second her feet left the bottom, she pushed me under.

Not a little shove. A full send. This grown woman, who I love, who I flew to another country to celebrate, used my body as a boat ramp and launched herself toward dry land like I was a stranger and not the person who told her she'd be fine thirty seconds earlier. I had to push her off me hard enough to break loose, get us both stable, and haul myself back up sputtering.

I came up alone. Fran had already put distance between us and gotten herself back to where it was safe, so there was no confrontation in the water, just me, catching my breath, watching her swim off toward the bank like nothing had happened.

It wasn't until later, once we were both dry and the shock had worn off, that I brought it up. Jokingly at first, the way you do when you haven't fully decided how mad you actually are and you're testing the water with humor before you commit to the truth. But underneath the joke I was serious, and I told her exactly how it felt to be pushed under by someone I loved enough to fly to another country and celebrate. I stayed mad about it for a good while too. This wasn't a five minute thing.

The Field Note itself didn't show up that day at all. It showed up much later, on an ordinary Tuesday, when my niece and I were talking about how fear holds people captive. Fran's story came up in the middle of that conversation, and I was still explaining what it felt like when my niece said the sentence before I could finish forming it myself.

"You can kill yourself and someone else with your fear."

She said it like a mic drop. On a Tuesday. Like it was nothing.

I sat back and said, baby, that is a Field Note. Write that down before we lose it. Haha.

Here's the part that makes this more than a funny story about almost dying on vacation.

What Fran did to me has a name. Lifeguards train specifically for it because it is so counterintuitive it gets people killed. It's called instinctive drowning response. A person who is actually drowning does not wave their arms and yell for help like the movies. They go quiet. They climb. Given the choice between grabbing a floating object and grabbing the person swimming toward them, a drowning person will grab the person, every time, and push them under without a flicker of awareness that they're doing it. It isn't cruelty. It isn't even a decision. Her nervous system took the wheel from her rational mind and asked exactly one question: how do I not die in the next three seconds. My name was not part of that equation. Nobody's name is.

And before I point this at anyone else, let me point it at myself first.

I have been Fran. Not in a river, in a business. There have been seasons building this ecosystem where I felt the ground shift under a deadline or a launch, and instead of trusting the systems and people I'd already put in place to hold me, I gripped tighter. I over-explained. I redid work that was already done. I made someone else's steadiness the thing I climbed to keep my own head above water, and called it high standards instead of what it actually was, which was panic with better posture. I am not exempt from this pattern. I am just someone who eventually noticed she was doing it.

That is the part I need you to sit with, because it does not stay in the water.

It shows up in the leader who feels a project slipping and, instead of trusting the team to hold them up, climbs on top of everyone underneath them, takes the credit, hands off the blame, and pushes the very people who were keeping things afloat straight under so they can keep their own head above water.

It shows up in the parent who feels their child pulling toward independence, reads that pull as drowning, and grips harder instead of trusting the life jacket they spent years building into that kid. The tighter grip is not protection. It is the parent trying to stay afloat by keeping the child from ever leaving their arms.

It shows up in the partner who feels unseen and, instead of saying so and trusting the relationship to hold that truth, climbs onto the other person through guilt, accusation, or manufactured chaos, using their partner's steadiness as something to stand on instead of asking to be held.

It shows up in the friend who cannot let you have a hard week, because your hard week means you are not currently available to hold them up, so they minimize your problem, one up it, or find a way to make it about them, pushing your reality under so theirs can breathe.

None of them are trying to hurt you. They are trying not to go under. And a nervous system in survival mode does not ask who is standing closest before it climbs. It only knows the surface is close, and you are the nearest thing solid enough to push off of.

That's the whole thesis, honestly. Fear is never a private event. It doesn't stay contained to the person feeling it. It reaches out and pulls the nearest steady thing under with it, and the nearest steady thing is usually whoever loves them enough to swim over in the first place.

Now here's the part people don't want to hear, including me, in the moment.

I had to shove her away from me to save us both.

Sometimes love does not look like holding on tighter. Sometimes love looks like creating enough distance that neither of you goes under. That is not abandonment. That is not me being cold. That is the actual math of survival, and it rarely feels wise while you're doing it. It only looks like wisdom afterward, once you're both standing on the bank, breathing, and she's apologizing and you're still a little mad but mostly just glad you're both alive to tell it as a story at dinner.

Before you close this, sit with five thoughts.

Notice where your grip has gotten tighter in the last month, and ask what you were actually afraid of losing.

Notice who has recently felt like they were suddenly responsible for your steadiness, and ask if you handed them that job without asking.

Notice the last time you called panic by another name, like high standards, urgency, or just caring a lot.

Notice whether the person you pushed under was trying to hurt you, or was simply the nearest solid thing when you started to sink.

Notice what it would cost you to trust the life jacket you already built, instead of the grip of your own two hands.

So here's the question my niece and I couldn't put down after we stopped laughing.

Where in your life has fear convinced you that grabbing tighter is how you survive, when what you actually needed was enough stillness to float?

Invisible Crown leadership begins within. Authority is not declared. It is embodied.