Chapter 15: No One Sat With Me, So I Stayed Anyway

Today I had an epiphany. I have so much empathy for other people. I can sit with their pain, understand it, hold it, excuse it… even when it hurts me. But when it comes to me, there are very few people who will sit in a dark room with me and say, “it’s okay to feel bad.” Very few who will wrap their arms around me and let me fall apart without trying to fix me, dismiss me, or disappear. And I think that’s where this all starts, because I didn’t grow up with that. I grew up in a house where the focus was somewhere else where bigger pain existed, louder pain, pain that demanded attention. My mom tried for nine years to have me, and then I happened. I don’t know if I was a miracle or just mistimed, but somehow I always felt like an accident. When you feel like someone’s mistake, you try to make up for it. You become charming, entertaining, easy to love.

So I became the joker of the house, the one who didn’t need too much, the one who could sit with heavy feelings alone because there wasn’t space for them anywhere else. The “window child.” Seen, but not really looked at. Present, but not held. I learned how to be easy, how to not take up space, how to survive feelings that were too big for a kid and too inconvenient for anyone else to notice. Somewhere along the way, I became the jester, the one who lightens the mood, the one who makes people laugh, the one who makes everything feel okay. And I got really good at it. So good that people stopped looking any deeper.

But underneath all of that, I’m still a person. I bleed like everyone else. I'm an empath, who feels things deeply, who gets tired, who sometimes just wants someone to sit in the dark with me without needing me to perform first. But when you build your identity around being easy for other people, it’s hard to suddenly say, I need something too, because you don’t even know if people will stay once you stop being what they’re used to.

That belief followed me into everything, especially love. I don’t just have a fear of abandonment I have a pattern of finding people who confirm it. I’m anxious. I attach deeply, I let myself be treated poorly, I notice everything, I allow myself to be ignored and the silence feels loud, distance feels like loss.

So I lean in, and somehow I always find people who pull away. Avoidant people who reinforce exactly what I already believe. And it doesn’t just feel like pain it feels too familiar, like something I’ve lived before. Like I deserve somhow to always come last, and every else deserves to go first.

Today it hit me, I have been here before. Not in relationships, but in front of a slot machine. There’s something I don’t talk about much. I used to play slots not for fun, not casually, not even for money. I played to lose. I could be up, like really up, life changing amounts of money and something in my brain wouldn’t let me walk away. In my mind, I didn’t deserve to win. It wasn’t about the money or the outcome it was like I needed to stay long enough for it all to disappear and hurt me. And I never understood why.

Now I do. It’s dopamine, a repeating pattern, and it’s a belief that I deserve always the bare minimum and to hit rock bottom every single time.

I’ve been doing the same thing with people, especially those I love and care about the most, staying when I’m losing, staying when it costs me my peace, staying because every once in a while they give me something small. A message, a moment, a little bit of effort and that smallest possible thing feels like everything. Like a win. Like relief. But it’s not love.

It never matches what I bring to the table.

It’s intermittent reinforcement. It’s the same mechanism that keeps you sitting at a machine long after you should have walked away. Anxious attachment isn’t chasing love it’s chasing relief. Relief that they didn’t leave, relief that maybe this time will be different. And avoidance?

That’s the machine. Cold, unpredictable, giving just enough to keep you there. And I’ve stayed too long in those cycles, because deep down, it feels like home.

Two days ago, I started shadow work, and it’s painful for my mind that already overthinks everything, and wants to love unconditionally, but I know I have to do it.

I also went back on an antidepressant, and I won’t lie that part humbled me more than anything. I thought I was supposed to be past this. But I’m not. I’ve been too deep in my feelings about some serious health concerns, too deep in the fear of an upcoming surgery. I wake up in the middle of the night and pace the house in the dark, heart racing, thoughts spiraling. I have nightmares about what could go wrong, about not waking up the same, or not waking up at all. And in those moments, it’s just me. I try to hint to people that I need to talk about it, and they brush it off. I don't tell people how afraid I am, for fear that I will upset them. Or no one is really listening, like they hear the words but not the weight behind them and move on.

I feel utterly alone. I can talk all day for work, check in with friends, I feel like I’ve spent my whole life being there for everyone else, but I don’t know how to be there for myself and I don't know how to ask for more.

I have resoved that I need to try something different, even if it feels unnatural, even if it feels like loss. I’m trying to sit with my own feelings instead of outsourcing my worth to other people. And it’s hard, because self-respect sometimes feels lonelier than abandonment. But I know I can’t keep doing this. I can’t keep playing games I’m designed to lose. I can’t keep confusing chaos with love.

One last note, I’m a mental health advocate, and writing has always been cathartic for me. When I started this blog two years ago, I wrote two posts and then disappeared. Maybe that was part of the pattern too starting something I loved and abandoning it before it could become something real. But about a month ago, I made a commitment to come back. Not perfectly, not polished, just honestly.

So even if this is just me screaming into the void, and the same 16 people (hey its an increase from when I rebooted a month ago!, progress right?) who read this thank you. This matters to me. Because this blog isn’t just about expression, I am allowed to take up space.