The Fear That Follows Me Into Intimacy
Opening up doesn’t quiet the past. It just gives it more room to echo.
I finally decided to name this feeling in my gut. Not to mistake it for an actual gut feeling—an instinct or deeper intuition. No, just the fear of abandonment sitting in my gut, making “impending doom” an actual physical sensation. I’d forgotten how bad I had this until I recently decided to open myself up to the promise of romantic love. Even promise doesn’t feel right. Nothing’s truly promised but one thing. See how things escalate so quickly into a downward spiral?
I don’t know how I cope.
Part of the coping has been mirroring the emotionally unavailable men I’m accustomed to. If I go into it already aware that they’ll never be able to be fully present with me, then I can always stay ready to leave. I can always let my leg hang off the bed, close to the floor, let my eyes restlessly move only when in search of my clothes and the door. I’ve been getting rest lately. Still a bit flighty when the morning comes, but met with statements like, “You don’t have to go.” All of a sudden, I’m not opposed to just staying on the ground anymore.
He’s grounding.
He doesn’t follow me on Instagram. He says he doesn’t want to overly watch my page. He consciously set that boundary for himself. He’s not a social media person in general. I do my best to respect it. But a part of me—my entire nervous system, if I’m being honest—wants him to look at my pictures when I’m away. When I try to find the root, I think about how my father, at the very least, always kept a couple pictures of me around the house. I’d look at them when I’d come visit him on the weekends. It was somewhat comforting. They also weren’t always the ones of me looking my best, which balanced out his in-person hypercriticism. It was a little proof that he truly loved me—flaws and all.
With him, without those pictures, I’m forgettable. In person, I’m subject to the self-critical. I’m exposed and shown in my rawest, purest form. There’s nothing of me in a better light to fixate on. Only the hope that I’m on his mind when I’m gone. That’s as uncomfortably intangible as the promise I mentioned earlier.
If I always only experience the thrilling early phases of situations—even if they’re short-lived—I never have to face deep disappointment. Less time spent means more reasons outside of myself that I can come up with for the shift. We’ve gone past the trial period, the links aren’t sneaky, we’re at morning breath level, much more sunrise light as opposed to my preferred sunsets, barefaced and blemished…
And here I am, waiting for fate to collect like autopay. Truly an emo girl at heart, but no long bang to hide behind.
The only love songs I’m listening to these days are the complex ones about fear and the reflex of wanting to self-sabotage. The writer in me needs something more relatable, I guess—not the swooning of sweet nothings. “Getting Late” by Floetry has been the soundtrack for my late-night drives as I try to calm my fears and anxiety. I create my own songs in my head when it’s silent, but they’re never pleasant.
I think about the saying often: You can’t miss what you’ve never had.
I’ve realized I’ve found much more comfort in the never having.
I now know that I just don’t want to miss.