Conscious Avoidance

At work this week, the topic of relationships came up and I mentioned to a colleague that I wanted to stay single for 2 years. One pharmacist I was working with overheard me and seemed aghast, gasping: “That’s so sad!”

“Not as sad as being a relationship that makes you miserable,” I replied, defending my position.

We shared a bus ride together after work and I discovered she had a track record of dating no-good men. When asked about her current relationship, she all but pulled a face. Interesting.

I’m someone who identifies with having a somewhat anxious attachment style. I’m afraid of abandonment, it comes naturally to me to put my needs second, to mould myself around another person and treat our connection as being the most important thing in my life. I can be hypervigilant, interpreting the subtlest changes in behaviour and communication from my partner as a sign that they have, inevitably, lost interest in me.

At the moment, and after acknowledging the two recent connections I made as being triggers for my underlying attachment wounds, I’m becoming more avoidant. I have no interest in giving anyone access to me. I don’t want to be accessible.

I want to disable my DMs, meet “friendly” messages from men with silence and see any man who reaches out to me as another leech looking to take without giving.

I suppose whatever boundaries I’ve had before have not been rigid enough. And I guess my judge of character has not been as intuitive as I thought it was. I feel as if I can’t take anything at face value and this is partly due to the scourge of the internet.

What is a first impression, a gesture of kindness, a compliment or a connection if it happens online? Is it really any of these things or could it just be artifice, a contrived simulation of human touch?

I’m erecting walls for real this time. I owe it to myself. I don’t care if I become a cliché of a heartbroken woman with her guard up, afraid of becoming hurt – what’s wrong with that? It’s a rational response to having your heart be chewed up and spit out.

I want the control, the nonchalance, the unattainability, for men to deem me a frigid bitch with no sense of humour. Because I don’t – I don’t have a sense of humour for men wasting my time. I don’t think it’s cute or fun. I don’t want to be hard to get – I don’t want to be gotten at all. And I don’t want to be for a long time.

I wrote a poem last night called Never Sleep On A Fight. I was watching a drama series called LOVE on Netflix and a scene of a couple fighting had me thinking about past relationships and how much I let shit slide.

Never Sleep On A Fight

Never sleep on a fight,
Or do.

Go home separately;
You to your bed, him to his. Bask in that resentment.

Don't let the dopamine be in lieu of the violation
 - cherish your loneliness.

The countless times where if only I'd listened to my own silence and not the sleeping breath of him next to me, contaminating my bed;
If I'd just listened to the swell of my bruised heart before it eventually shattered;
If I'd trusted my own perception of reality over his selfish need to make me stay - 

Then perhaps I wouldn't have lost myself in love.

Maybe I wouldn't see evil in the eyes of every man I meet and profess my hatred of them to my friends in subtle jest.
Maybe this bitter flame wouldn't torch my insides as it has the tendency to do.

Never sleep on a fight.
Why? Because it could cement a decision?

The delusions born of our wounds or those of our addicted hearts 
 - pick your poison.

I was born in Disneyland,
Cut in half from my "better" half by Plato and his theory.

Never sleep on a fight
Don't you see? You will be an amputee. 
In a love-sick, ableist society.

I'm rolling lint from my clothes, sharpening my nails, sleeping with my socks on because fuck my ex.

It's been years and I'm still angry
 - maybe I should've slept on it.

I want to iterate that I don’t feel in a particularly bad place right now. The anger and feeling of violation is motivating me into a new phase of my life.

I’m looking to make a big change in my music career moving forward that I feel hopeful about. I have 3 more sessions left with my current therapist after which there will be at least a month’s break before I hopefully start long-term therapy with someone else.

I’ve been 6 weeks on sertraline (I’ll post an update soon) and I’m doing okay. Aside from being tired (from the meds and not my own sleep habits this time), I’ve had a pretty good week. I’m off social media at the moment and I’m enjoying the space.

I mused this morning that I’m giving too much energy to the past and struggling to really look forward. Which is understandable considering how deeply suicidal I was not too long ago. But the first step to changing something is becoming aware of it. I might not be able to give less energy to the past straight away but I’m aware that I want to do that less.

I hope that you’re doing okay. I hope you’re prioritising yourself.

Thank you so much for reading.

– SMUT. ❤ xxxx