Last Updated on May 5, 2026

I keep writing and rewriting because some part of me still believes I can change the story.

Not the facts.
Not what happened.

But the emotional ending.

Some part of me still wants to arrive at a version where I finally understand enough, explain enough, soften enough, heal enough, and then suddenly everything will feel peaceful.

As if clarity itself could undo attachment.

As if insight could reverse longing.

But I’m starting to understand something much simpler and much harder:

The peace I am looking for cannot be found inside another person’s mind.

Not in whether they loved me.
Not in whether I mattered.
Not in whether they miss me.
Not in whether they misunderstood me.
Not in whether I was “too much.”
Not in whether someday they would have chosen me.

I spent years trying to locate myself inside other people’s feelings about me.

And the more uncertain the connection became, the more intensely I searched.

I understand now that this wasn’t just heartbreak.

It was self-abandonment.

There were relationships in my life where I slowly organized myself around another person’s attention. Around their availability. Around their warmth. Around tiny signs of closeness.

A text.
A hug.
A night together.
A massage.
A look.
A shift in tone.
A possibility.

I kept hoping that if I stayed loving enough, patient enough, understanding enough, emotionally intelligent enough, eventually the relationship would become mutual in the way I longed for.

But I wasn’t living in reality.

I was living in hope.

And hope can become a place to disappear inside.

Especially when someone gives you just enough closeness to keep your nervous system attached.

I don’t say this to blame anyone.

I don’t think the people I loved were evil.
I don’t think they were consciously trying to destroy me.

In many ways, they were simply being themselves.

The harder truth is that I kept abandoning myself in order to remain connected.

I kept overriding my own reality.
My own needs.
My own grief.
My own intuition.

I kept trying to transform partial availability into love.

And I think part of me believed that if I could finally get someone emotionally unavailable to fully choose me, then maybe I would finally feel worthy.

But that day never came.

What has changed recently is that I no longer want to spend my life decoding people.

I no longer want to spend years trying to understand what someone “really felt” while my own life quietly passes by.

I want to stay with myself.

That sounds simple.
It isn’t.

Because staying with myself means feeling the grief directly instead of converting it into fantasy, analysis, longing, or hope.

It means allowing myself to miss people without turning missing them into a mission.

It means accepting that some connections were meaningful to me without needing those people to confirm the meaning.

It means allowing sacred moments to belong to my life, even if they did not become permanent relationships.

There is sadness in this.

There is sadness in realizing how much energy and life-force I poured into spaces that could never fully hold me.

But there is also relief.

Because I no longer need to keep trying to solve the same emotional equation over and over again.

I can stop searching for myself inside people who are not choosing me.

I can stop building my identity around being wanted.

I can stop waiting for someone else to tell me I mattered.

I mattered because I was there.

Because I loved.
Because I felt.
Because I opened.
Because I survived.

That is enough.

I used to imagine love as standing at the edge of a massive crack in the earth — an impossible divide between myself and another person.

Now the image that comes to me is different.

I see myself inside a cave.

For years I was making truth out of the little bits of light I could see from inside it. Building entire emotional worlds from fragments. Convincing myself that longing was the same thing as connection.

But there is an entire world outside the cave.

And I think my life now is about finding my way toward it.

Not toward certainty.
Not toward perfection.

Just toward openness.
Toward reality.
Toward self-trust.

Toward the quiet, difficult work of no longer leaving myself behind.

The Aliveness I Mistook for Love

There is something I am beginning to understand about myself that feels both painful and liberating.

Part of me became attached not only to people —
but to longing itself.

For a long time, I thought what I was experiencing was simply love.

Chemistry.
Soul recognition.
Intense connection.

And some of it was real connection.

But there was something else happening too.

Something physiological.
Something emotional.
Something almost addictive.

I recently began understanding my relational patterns through the lens of attachment, nervous-system regulation, autism spectrum sensitivity, and something called Existential Kink — the idea that human beings can unconsciously derive pleasure or aliveness from the very emotional patterns that cause suffering.

That landed in me deeply.

Because when I look honestly at my life, I can feel it:

There is a part of me that comes alive in longing.

In uncertainty.
In yearning.
In almost being chosen.
In trying to reach someone emotionally unavailable.

Not consciously.

But somatically.

My body responds intensely to intermittent closeness.

Especially physical closeness.

Touch regulates me deeply.
Attuned touch changes my entire nervous system.

When someone I feel emotionally connected to touches me gently, warmly, consistently, something in me softens in an almost overwhelming way.

My mind quiets.
My body relaxes.
My emotions organize.

It feels like relief.
Like home.
Like finally exhaling.

And because of that, I think I began linking certain people to regulation itself.

Not just desire.

Relief.
Safety.
Aliveness.

I now understand that my ASD diagnosis matters here.

I don’t experience connection casually.

When I bond, I bond deeply.
When I feel, I feel physically.
When I fixate, my attention narrows intensely.

Ambiguity becomes consuming.

And intermittent reinforcement — moments of closeness mixed with distance, unpredictability, or partial availability — can become neurologically gripping.

Especially when combined with attraction, touch, emotional intensity, and longing.

I think I kept mistaking activation for destiny.

I thought:
This must mean something enormous.

But intensity is not always intimacy.

Sometimes it is nervous-system activation.
Sometimes it is attachment hunger.
Sometimes it is the emotional electricity of uncertainty.

And if I’m honest, there were parts of those dynamics that felt incredibly alive.

Painful, yes.
But also alive.

Longing gave my emotional world shape.
Hope gave me momentum.
Fantasy gave me stimulation.
Wanting someone gave me direction.

Without that intensity, life could suddenly feel flat.

Quiet.
Empty.
Heavy.

That doesn’t mean my feelings were fake.

They were real.

But I think I confused emotional activation with relational truth.

I also see now how partially unavailable relationships felt safer to me than fully mutual ones.

Because if someone is never fully available, I never fully have to risk being seen.

I can remain in yearning instead of exposure.

I can stay in imagination instead of reality.

I can chase connection without fully relaxing into it.

That’s painful to admit.

Especially because I spent years believing I was simply “loving deeply.”

But sometimes I was organizing my life around emotional intensity because intensity felt more familiar than peace.

Now I’m trying something different.

When I feel longing arise, I try not to immediately turn it into a story about another person.

Instead I ask:

What is happening in my body right now?

What am I actually needing?

Touch?
Rest?
Safety?
Soothing?
Movement?
Comfort?
Connection?
Grief?

Sometimes underneath the longing is simply a nervous system asking not to be abandoned.

That changes everything.

Because then the work is not:
How do I get them back?

The work becomes:
How do I stay with myself?

Loving From Inside the Cave

I used to think I was searching for love.

Now I think I was often searching for recognition.

For someone who could finally see me fully and still stay.

But the deeper truth is more complicated than that, because I’m not sure I was actually allowing myself to be fully seen.

I spent much of my life loving from inside a cave.

Not intentionally.

It was just the only way I knew.

I would catch glimpses of people:
their warmth
their attention
their intelligence
their tenderness
their beauty
their emotional depth

And from those fragments, I built entire worlds.

I became incredibly emotionally attached to possibility.

To what something could become.
To what someone might eventually feel.
To what might happen if they finally understood me deeply enough.

But fantasy is safer than reality.

Fantasy allows longing without full exposure.

Real love requires being seen.

And that terrified me.

Because underneath everything was a very old belief:
If someone truly sees me, they won’t choose me.

Not the curated version.
Not the attractive version.
Not the emotionally insightful version.
Not the spiritually evolved version.

Me.

My body.
My awkwardness.
My intensity.
My sensitivity.
My exhaustion.
My neediness.
My confusion.
My grief.
My humanness.

I realize now how much energy I spent trying to manage perception.

Trying to appear lovable enough.
Easy enough.
Beautiful enough.
Self-aware enough.

Even while secretly believing I was fundamentally too much.

Too emotional.
Too sensitive.
Too dysregulated.
Too strange.
Too needy.
Too hard to love.

So I unconsciously gravitated toward relationships where I could stay partially hidden.

Relationships built around longing, fantasy, intermittent closeness, or emotional ambiguity allowed me to remain emotionally activated without fully surrendering into vulnerability.

I could ache for love without having to truly live inside it.

I could remain in anticipation instead of embodiment.

And because the relationships were inconsistent, I never had to confront the deeper fear:

What if someone actually stayed long enough to truly know me?

Would I even know how to let that happen?

This is where the cave metaphor keeps returning for me.

Inside the cave, I was making truth from shadows and partial light.

Every text became meaningful.
Every moment of closeness became enormous.
Every withdrawal became devastating.

I wasn’t seeing the whole landscape.

I was building emotional reality from fragments.

And because I was so focused on what was happening “out there” — in another person, another relationship, another possibility — I lost contact with myself.

I lost contact with my own body.
My own rhythms.
My own life.

I poured extraordinary amounts of life-force into longing.

Now I want something different.

Not fantasy.
Not performance.
Not emotional starvation disguised as romance.

I want openness.

I want relationships where I do not have to disappear in order to remain connected.

I want to stop organizing myself around unavailable people.

I want to stop mistaking emotional intensity for intimacy.

And maybe most importantly:

I want to stop abandoning myself while searching to be chosen.

I don’t think this transformation happens all at once.

I think it happens slowly.

Moment by moment.

Each time I choose reality over fantasy.
Each time I stay with grief instead of chasing someone.
Each time I let longing move through my body without turning it into a story.

Maybe that is what leaving the cave actually is.

Not becoming fearless.

Just becoming willing to step into the open air.