Stability used to mean predictability.
It meant assuming tomorrow would resemble today. It meant moving through life without thinking about footing, without noticing how much effort it took just to remain upright.
That definition no longer works.
I wrote about the how the ground changed in Living on a Fracture Line.
After the unthinkable, stability didn’t disappear. But it didn’t arrive as calm either.
My nervous system is more reactive now. There is more noise, more alertness, more awareness of what can go wrong. Nothing inside feels settled in the way it once did.
Stability isn’t the absence of that.
It’s holding it.
Not smoothing it out. Not quieting it down. Holding it without coming apart.
There isn’t much stopping. Only moving forward.
I don’t pause to calculate what each step will cost. I take the step, and then I learn. Sometimes it holds. Sometimes it doesn’t feel the way I expected. The understanding comes after, not before.
Stability hasn’t been something I planned or managed. It’s something that has slowly become visible because I keep going.
I’m learning what holds by standing on it.
I do compare who I am now to who I was before.
Not because I expect to return there, but because part of me still longs for what existed before the unthinkable. That comparison matters. It carries information.
It shows me how I’ve changed, what I carry now, and what it takes to hold myself up in the aftermath.
That comparison isn’t only longing.
It’s orientation.
Stability now isn’t calm, and it isn’t certainty. It’s the ability to remain upright in motion. To keep moving long enough to recognize what supports you, and then to keep moving again.
It’s not knowing in advance.
It’s learning, over time, that I am still here.
I didn’t lose stability entirely.
I lost the version of it that depended on ease and assumption.
What remains isn’t peaceful, but it’s real. It’s deliberate without being planned. Contained without being quiet.
It holds.
And that’s what stability means now.
