The night before last, I had a frightening dream.
Two foreign men who said they were interested in Japanese houses came to visit our home.
At first, I treated them kindly, the way we usually would as Sushi Couple.
But something felt off.
They wanted to look around the house.
They tried to enter the other rooms as well.
Something isn’t right.
Even while feeling that,
I ended up moving with them into the living room.
The moment I tried to watch carefully for anything suspicious,
one of the men casually placed something on the table.
This is bad.
I knew it instantly.
I grabbed it and tried to throw it away.
But it was some kind of poisonous gas.
Suddenly, I couldn’t breathe.
My chest tightened.
My lungs would not work.
I pulled Moriyan toward the entrance as hard as I could,
because he didn’t yet understand what was happening.
Whether we made it outside or not—
I woke up in the middle of that fear of death.
It felt painfully real.
After waking, a thought came to me.
Maybe I had been trying to be kind to everyone
simply because they were foreigners.
Of course, kindness matters.
But at the same time,
I realized I need to meet people not as categories,
but as individuals.
It was as if the dream were telling me:
Kindness alone is not enough.
You also need boundaries.
Then something else happened.
There was a message I had been happily replying to,
when Moriyan casually said,
“This might be a little suspicious.”
The moment he said that,
I remembered the dream.
I asked for advice elsewhere,
and was told it was likely a scam.
At that instant,
the area around my solar plexus tightened sharply.
If I hadn’t noticed…
If I had continued talking…
If I had gone further…
The thought suddenly terrified me,
and I couldn’t sleep.
But that fear revealed something deeper.
For a long time, I’ve been afraid of:
being disliked,
disappointing people,
losing trust.
The kind of themes often written about in books like The Courage to Be Disliked.
I had always felt this was something
I would need to face someday.
I just didn’t expect it to arrive like this.
When I looked closer,
I realized I’m not truly afraid of being disliked itself.
What I fear is:
losing trust,
letting people down,
being looked at coldly,
becoming isolated.
That likely comes from past experiences.
But deeper than even that,
I sensed something more fundamental.
What I truly fear is:
being made to feel that I have no value.
The moment I saw that clearly,
the fear began to change shape.
My heart was still pounding in my solar plexus.
But it no longer felt like some nameless terror.
Instead, I found myself thinking:
Ah… so that’s what this is.
Maybe this wasn’t fear of danger at all.
Maybe it was the trembling that comes
when touching an old wound inside yourself.
I’ve been through many painful moments in life.
And each time, I tried to believe:
Maybe this is the sign before growth.
That is how I moved through them.
This time feels similar.
But also different.
I had never felt fear so intense
that my body reacted this strongly.
Honestly, I was surprised
that the brain could create such a physical response.
It was so overwhelming
that I couldn’t imagine it might be leading me toward healing.
Even now,
there is still a slight discomfort in my solar plexus.
But it no longer feels like terror.
Instead, it feels more like standing in front of something important.
A nervous kind of heartbeat.
I don’t know whether I can overcome this theme.
But I do know this:
I am standing at the entrance to that next stage.
So this pulse I feel now
is not the pulse of fear.
It may be—
the pulse of resolve.
February 2026