Every Wednesday, Kionna is telling the truth about what it actually cost to leave — the parts that don't make it into the photos. This is Part 3.

Moving abroad comes with emotions nobody can fully prepare you for.

There is excitement. There is anxiety. There is that strange combination of knowing exactly what you want while simultaneously wondering what the hell you are doing.

Before you leave, you check boxes.

Do I have everything?

Did I forget something?

What happens when I get there?

What if this doesn't work?

Then you make the move and another set of emotions arrives. Excitement because you actually did it. Fear because everything is unfamiliar. Curiosity. Freedom. Uncertainty.

But when you move abroad secretly, fear hits differently.

It becomes heavier because there are consequences attached to being discovered.

I was the primary person taking care of things financially, so losing my job didn't feel like losing just a job. In my mind, it could threaten everything we had built.

Would I disappoint my wife?

Would I lose our stability?

Would we have to return to the United States?

Would we end up homeless?

Would people judge me?

What would my coworkers think if they discovered I had been working from another country without telling them?

And underneath all of that was another uncomfortable truth.

I pride myself on integrity.

Yet I was being dishonest.

I wasn't living completely in my truth, and I knew it.

That created a battle inside of me that was sometimes harder than the fear of actually being caught.

There were moments when I was angry with myself.

How did I become someone who had to monitor every word that came out of my mouth?

Then another voice would answer:

Because you're trying to survive.

That became the constant negotiation.

Risk versus reward.

Integrity versus survival.

Freedom versus security.

The fear didn't stay at work.

It followed me everywhere.

I love social media. When I lived near friends and family, social media wasn't my only connection to them. I could see people. We could hang out. We could talk face-to-face.

Living abroad changed that.

Social media became one of the easiest ways to remain connected, except now I had to think about what every post revealed.

Before we left the United States, Cam and I hosted Thanksgiving.

For the first time, our families came together. Her mother. My mother. My grandparents. Her grandmother. Everybody together as one family.

It was one of the best Thanksgivings I had ever experienced.

Cam made a social media post and tagged me.

Normally, something that beautiful would have been exactly the kind of moment I wanted attached to my name.

Instead, I told her to untag me.

The post revealed that we were leaving the country.

That was how fear worked.

What can I post?

How much can I say?

Who follows me?

What could somebody figure out?

What could accidentally expose where I am?

I had moved thousands of miles in pursuit of freedom while becoming increasingly careful about how much of my own life I allowed people to see.

That contradiction stayed with me.

I was free geographically, but I wasn't completely free emotionally.

I couldn't fully be myself.

Eventually, I created a bubble around myself.

People outside of work knew I worked in a helping profession, but I rarely talked deeply about my job.

It wasn't because I wasn't proud of it.

I was.

Getting my job at Marigold Health had been a major accomplishment. I excelled there. I cared about the work.

But letting people too far into that part of my life felt dangerous because I worried that information could somehow travel back to work.

And fear became so deeply embedded in my life that I couldn't even completely drop the mask in therapy.

Think about that.

Therapy is supposed to be one of the safest places available to tell the truth.

And I never told my therapist that I had left the country.

Even after I eventually lost my job, I didn't initially explain the entire reason.

That realization hit me hard.

If you don't feel safe enough to tell your therapist the whole truth, how heavy is the secret you're carrying?

I was doing everything I knew to manage my mental health.

Sometimes during my 30-minute work break, I would go sit in the steam room just to decompress enough to finish the rest of the day.

Those tools helped.

But they couldn't remove the source of the fear because the source was still there.

I was still hiding.

There is a version of conversations about anxiety that I don't like.

People will tell you not to worry because most of the things you're afraid of will never happen.

That's comforting.

It just isn't always true.

Sometimes the shit you're afraid of happens.

I feared judgment.

Some people judged me.

I worried about financial instability.

Losing my income absolutely created financial uncertainty.

The termination itself happened almost exactly how I imagined it would.

I've been through enough meetings with Human Resources in my lifetime to know how those conversations tend to go.

You get the message.

You get invited to the meeting.

You already feel something is wrong.

Then comes the conversation.

The thing I had been afraid of happened.

But here's what fear never told me.

Life would continue afterward.

That is where fear charges terrible interest.

I lost the job once.

But emotionally, I had been making payments on the possibility for months.

Then the actual bill finally came.

And worrying beforehand didn't give me a discount.

My anxiety even followed me into my sleep.

I once dreamed I was inside the office when a volcano erupted.

Lava was coming down the hill.

Everybody needed to leave.

The CEO told me to stay and work.

I'm looking at lava coming toward us thinking, Bitch, do you not see the lava?

She didn't care.

Stay and work.

I finally told her I was leaving.

She threatened to tell my supervisor, Rachel.

I remember responding that she didn't need to tell Rachel because I would tell her myself.

I called Rachel and told her:

The volcano erupted. Lava is coming. I'm leaving.

And in the dream, Rachel told me:

You're doing the right thing.

That dream stayed with me because my waking life felt completely different.

In real life, I was constantly questioning whether I was doing the right thing.

I understood why I had made the decision.

I knew what I was trying to protect.

But understanding your choices doesn't automatically remove the conflict you feel about them.

Maybe the dream wasn't giving me permission to secretly relocate.

Maybe my mind was asking a harder question:

I still don't think that question has a simple answer.

That's why it's uncomfortable.

Losing my job also forced me to examine relationships I thought were real.

I've had a lot of jobs.

I still talk to people I met at Comcast.

I still have friendships from Verizon.

I still know people from Discover.

Hell, I still have friends from RadioShack, and RadioShack doesn't exists anymore.

But Marigold?

Silence.

Not one peer regularly calls to check on me.

Any conversations I've had with former coworkers have mostly been initiated by me.

That has been strange.

Sometimes it almost makes that period of my life feel imaginary.

I thought I had built meaningful bonds there.

Maybe some people felt betrayed.

Maybe some were angry.

Maybe after my departure and the restructuring that followed, some people connected what happened to me with changes that affected them.

Maybe some relationships were simply workplace relationships that felt deeper because we interacted every day.

I don't know.

And I've reached a place where I don't need to know.

I'm not chasing friendships.

That chapter closed.

Some relationships apparently closed with it.

That realization carries sadness, but it also brings clarity.

Anxiety did not completely control me during those months.

One of the most important skills I had learned years earlier was something a mentor called:

Listen to the thinker.

When anxiety started rising, I learned to stop.

What am I thinking about right now?

Not:

What might happen next week?

Not:

What could Human Resources know?

Not:

What if somebody saw something online?

What is actually happening right now?

Did something happen?

Is something happening?

What facts do I have?

What am I assuming?

That small pause helped separate fear from reality.

Sometimes there was an unexpected meeting invitation and my brain immediately reacted.

But a meeting invitation is a fact.

They're about to fire me is a prediction.

Eventually that prediction came true.

But until it happened, it was still a prediction.

That's an important distinction.

Acknowledging anxiety doesn't mean pretending danger doesn't exist.

It means refusing to let possibilities masquerade as facts.

I learned something about fear years ago working in sales at RadioShack.

Fear sells.

Scarcity sells.

Urgency sells.

Security sells.

FOMO sells.

Buy now because it might be gone tomorrow.

Protect yourself because something could happen.

Make the decision today before you miss your opportunity.

We respond to those things because fear is deeply human.

Our minds are constantly trying to protect us from what might happen next.

But that protective instinct can become expensive when tomorrow occupies so much mental real estate that we stop living today.

Thinking about the future can create anxiety.

Living in the past can create grief and sadness.

I've learned that the safest place for me emotionally is often right here.

Right now.

People in recovery hear a phrase constantly:

One day at a time.

I believe that applies far beyond recovery.

There were moments during my silent relocation when one day felt too big.

So I made it smaller.

One hour.

One minute.

One breath.

What can I control right now?

What can I do right now?

Where am I trying to go?

What is the next step?

Make the plan.

Write it down.

Do the next thing.

Then do the thing after that.

Fear loves the entire staircase.

Peace sometimes comes from focusing on the next step.

The strange part is that after months of trying everything I knew to manage the fear, the only thing that completely removed it was the thing I had been afraid of.

I lost the job.

And suddenly, I didn't have to hide anymore.

The burden disappeared because there was nothing left to protect.

There were new problems.

There were financial questions.

There was uncertainty.

But there was also relief.

I could speak freely.

I could build openly.

I could show up as myself.

I didn't have to constantly monitor what I posted or said.

I didn't have to compartmentalize my life.

I could operate with integrity again.

When I first asked myself this question, I assumed there had to be an answer.

Money?

Maybe.

Building Sovereign Sundays?

Making Redd Academy profitable?

Starting over professionally?

But when I really sat with it, I realized something.

I'm not afraid of those things.

I'm excited.

I'm motivated.

I'm determined.

I'm disciplined.

This time, I'm not building alone.

Cam and I have sat down and planned what we're creating. We have roles. We have responsibilities. We know there is work ahead of us.

I've survived too much to believe that uncertainty automatically means disaster.

So today, instead of paying interest on fear, I'm investing in what I can control.

Not knowing everything will work perfectly.

Just knowing that whatever comes next, you will meet it when it gets here.

Until then?

Stay here.

Listen to the thinker.

Take the next step.

And stop paying tomorrow's bills today.

Which fear are you paying interest on today?

K Redd, Arequipa

Part 4 of The Uncomfortable Truth drops next Wednesday. If this is the first thing of ours you've read, Sovereign Sundays goes out every Sunday.