How Does One Exit the Stranger Danger Phase?
We meet people who instantly feel like home, and there are others who’ve been in our home countless times, yet still feel foreign. Our nervous system rings its alarms in their familiar presence.
So what exactly does it mean to know someone?
Is it time? How long you have known them?
Then how come you reside in my eyes after just one glance?
And how come I’ve known them my whole life and still don’t really know?
Is it trauma bonding that makes us closer?
Then why do I feel bound to you—as if, in another life, we met and lived a thousand more?
Is it similarity?
But I’m so different… and you feel so safe.
Is it consistency?
But I believe you.
Even if you showed me once, deep in my heart of hearts, I believe you.
There are people whose love is etched into my bones, yet I remain on guard. Because the only consistency I’ve known is that peace is short-lived. There’s always a sharp stab right around the corner.
So what makes us feel close to people?
What builds those invisible ties we can’t see, but our entire being swears by?
It’s in the way our shoulders rest around them, how we unburden the weight we carry around daily.
It’s in the way our breathing slows, like we’ve finally taken a seat in this race we call life.
It’s in the way we smile around them—soft, eye-crinkled, effortless.
It’s in the way we just be—without a thousand mental obstacles before our words come out.
I don’t have to filter what I say through a million “what ifs.”
For me, closeness is:
Sharing a meal
Knowing what keeps you up at night
The fears you can’t tell anyone because they’re ridiculously unrealistic yet haunt you
The dreams you hide behind your eyes
Laughing uncontrollably, irresistibly, over the stupidest things
Knowing what you’re like right after you wake up
The childhood images you can’t forget—dark and beautiful
Your Roman Empire
What you love and hate most about your parents
Fighting with you and moving past it
How you would treat me if I make big and small mistakes
How you treat those who can’t benefit you
How you speak to yourself
Who you admire
Who makes you uncomfortable
The things you pray for
The invisible wounds you hide behind your pride
The snacks you'd choose before a fight
But mostly…
It’s having an unbreakable certainty that you’re committed—always and forever—to doing the right thing.1
It’s knowing you keep your heart clean and care for it consistently, scrubbing away any shreds of evil before they take permanent residence. Reflect, cleanse, and repeat.
It’s knowing you understand that being kind will always be better than being fair.
It’s trusting that even if you have the right to hurt me, you won’t choose to.
It’s recognizing that jealousy, bitterness, resentment—all those shades of hate—are valid, human feelings. But you don’t let them fester. You burn them. You plant better things in their place.
It’s trusting that you don’t have the capacity—or the will—to go for the low blows, the ones that scar.
That when things get ugly, you’ll try to find the beauty.
That you’ll hold onto the love we had, even when there’s nothing left.
That I’m not dispensable.
Because once I let you in and you graduate from the “stranger danger” phase, I’ll be paying the price of that decision for the rest of my life.
Because my version of love… is lasting.
but I guess people will always have the capacity to evolve and change. And maybe we’re always at risk of being intimately close to people we don’t truly know. So really, there’s no difference in the risk between letting in someone familiar or someone new. The flip can always be switched.
All we can do is ask ourselves:
Is it worth the risk?
I’ve never really felt anyone has been.
But you are different.
