Tension isn’t Pain — it’s Armor

It happened last night when I couldn't sleep.

My muscles were knots of tension, but not the usual kind. This was deeper — the kind that feels woven into your very being.

I started my stretching routine — nothing special. But then I tried something that changed everything: when I reached a point of resistance, instead of pushing through like we're all trained to do, I whispered to my body, "Let go. Trust yourself."

Something fucking extraordinary happened.

The muscle surrendered completely. And I felt another part of my body — one I hadn't even noticed was there — naturally take over the work.

In that moment, sprawled on my bedroom floor at 2AM, I understood something profound about human existence that nobody talks about: We are all prisoners of our own vigilance.

Every day we walk around armored up. On guard. Our bodies constantly battling invisible threats that haven't existed for decades — maybe never existed at all. We call it stress, anxiety, tension — but these are just symptoms of something more primal.

This isn't about relaxation techniques or fucking mindfulness apps. This is about the fundamental misunderstanding of what our bodies are doing with our emotions.

I always thought the tightness in my shoulders was anger, that the perpetual knot in my jaw was frustration. But now I see it clearly: it's not the emotion that's stored there—it's the defense against it.

Evolution has built us to survive, not to thrive. To protect, not to experience. Think about it: a creature perpetually braced for attack has a better chance of survival than one that's relaxed and vulnerable. So your body learns, on a cellular level, to never let down its guard.

But here's the revelation that hit me like lightning: this vigilance is now the very thing destroying us.

We don't trust our bodies to handle what comes, so we clench against life itself. We armor up against emotions, relationships, opportunities—holding everything in a death grip of control.

The real power lies in surrender. Not giving up, but giving in to your body's innate wisdom. Trusting that you can handle whatever comes without needing to stay perpetually tensed against it.

I've spent years in therapy talking about "letting go," but in five minutes on my bedroom floor, I felt what that actually means in my body. The relief was almost erotic in its intensity.

This isn't some woo-woo wellness trend. This is evolutionary biology crashing headlong into modern existence. This is the fundamental paradox of human survival: the very mechanisms that kept us alive are now keeping us from living.

And it makes me wonder — are there people who just... live without this? People who somehow escaped this evolutionary trap? I can't even wrap my mind around what that would feel like. The very concept of my shoulder just naturally staying down without me fighting to release it seems like science fiction.

I've watched babies sleep, their bodies completely loose and surrendered. Maybe some people maintain that somehow? Never learning the constant vigilance that feels so natural to me that I didn't even know it was there until it briefly disappeared.

In those few seconds when my muscle finally let go, I felt something ancient and familiar. Like some part of me recognized this state — remembered it from before the armor, before the vigilance, before I learned to brace against the world.

That's the thing about prisons. The longer you live in them, the more you forget there was ever anything else. Until some random night at 2AM, you accidentally find a key you didn't know existed, unlock a door you didn't know was there, and glimpse a freedom so foreign it almost feels dangerous.

And now I can't stop thinking about it.