I Keep Coming Back to Myself

Last Updated on April 26, 2026

Finding Peace Within

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

There’s a part of my nervous system that gets caught in these loops. It keeps trying to make it feel okay—to find closure, to find peace. Looping, spiraling, and circling in a way that won’t resolve until I make a different choice.

The most powerful thing for me to know is that the peace I can find will be with myself.

Any effort I make to understand what someone else thinks about me—whether they care about me or whether I mattered—places the power of my peace within them. I keep trying to find myself inside someone else’s mind.

I see that now.

That idea—that somebody else holds the key to my peace, that I need someone else’s approval to be okay—is the whole thing I’ve been struggling with. The whole thing that has been so hard for me in relationships.

I’m not going to beat myself up about it. I also can’t blame anybody else.

I don’t want to make anyone else feel badly for what happened between us or how they showed up. I don’t want pity, and I don’t want to depend on someone else’s compassion to feel okay. At the same time, I don’t have to push it away if it’s there. I can let care exist without needing it to define me.

I want to honor myself. Honor everyone who has been a part of my past.

I took as much courage as I could. I was as brave as I was able to be. I did what I did. It’s all part of my soul’s journey.

I feel proud of myself for the progress I’ve made.

I asked myself recently—is it important for me to tell these stories? Is it possible that I don’t need to tell them anymore? Is it possible that I don’t need to write long emails or send long audio messages trying to explain and overexplain myself?

The answer feels like yes.

It feels like part of my shift—from being anxiously and insecurely attached, especially when I’m trying to be in relationship with people who aren’t trying to be in a relationship with me—toward being securely attached.

That means I get to be securely attached to myself.

I get to be clear about what I’ve experienced and how things feel for me, without needing to locate myself inside someone else’s thoughts about me. Without being so focused on whether other people like me, approve of me, or choose me.

There is a sadness in seeing that I did want to be chosen. I did want to be seen and remembered and known in how meaningful those moments were to me.

I can hold that, without making it something that needs to be answered.

The kind of person I would want to be in relationship with would want me to have my own self. Would want me to be someone who doesn’t need their approval in order to be okay.

I’m finding my way through the recovery of that socialization—trying to be the version of myself that feels societally appropriate. I can also see that I learned those ways for a reason. I’m not fixing myself so much as unfolding into something more true.

I’m finding my way. It isn’t easy for anybody.

I feel that the people I’ve been intimate with, the people I’ve been close with, the people I’ve shared the most vulnerable parts of myself with… those moments were sacred to me.

That’s what matters.

I don’t need anyone else to approve of that, or share my belief that those moments were sacred, or remember them in the same way.

I can remember.

I can hold what it meant to me.

That’s enough.

It’s okay to let things be as they are now.

It’s okay to let go.

In the moments where I miss the connections I had that I don’t have anymore, I can let that be what it is. I can feel that I’m missing them, without turning it into a question I have to answer.

Maybe that’s a reminder to myself that I’m capable of those connections. I’m capable of a lot of things. I’m capable of having hope for my future.

I will have more connection. More intimacy. In those moments, I will choose to be true to myself, and not to abandon myself.

I will choose to do the hard, brave things. To have the conversations as best I can.

Just keep going on my soul’s journey.

I started to see that this wasn’t just about one relationship. It was a pattern. And I had been given language for it years ago, even before I understood it.

Birth chart

Recently I remembered an astrology session that I had with Ro Loughran. I met with her on January 11, 2019 and she went over my birth chart with me. She sent me a recording of the session that I just re-listened to it. I found it a helpful lens to view my past relationship patterns through.

One remarkable detail I remembered when listening is that the day before this session I had a positive pregnancy test. Within myself, I had a feeling of hope and cautious excitement about it, even though I am someone who has never wanted to have a baby. I ended up telling Ro about the pregnancy test. She was the first person I said it out loud to. Her reaction was so warm and hopeful. So much of what she shared seemed aligned.

When it came time to tell the person who created the pregnancy with me, it was so hard for me to find and get the words out. I did a terrible job sharing this news and his reaction was really hard for me. I felt all alone, no compassion and no sense of any support available.

The fragile sense of hope I had disappeared immediately. It would take years before I understood why. Re-listening to that recording recently, I found myself looking not at him, but at myself — at the patterns my chart had named long before I was ready to hear them. What I didn’t know then was that I had always been carrying a map.

The Map I Was Born With

I came into this world with a Cancer Moon sitting right on the horizon — my emotional life written into the sky at the very moment I arrived. Moon in Cancer is the antenna of feeling. It attunes. It reaches. It imagines into others with a tenderness and depth that can feel like a superpower, until it doesn’t.

For most of my life, I have loved people from inside a cave.

I could see what the light showed me — the warmth of someone’s smile, the way their mind worked, the feeling of being held — and I built entire worlds from those glimpses. I tended those worlds carefully, privately. I told myself it was love. And in a way it was. But it was also a way of staying safe. A story I could control. A feeling I could return to whenever I needed to remember that I was capable of deep connection, without actually risking anything.

My chart tells me that Venus and Pluto sit in opposition in my sky, with the Moon caught at the midpoint. This is the signature of magnetic pull — the kind that doesn’t make rational sense, the kind that lands in the body before the mind knows what’s happening. I’ve felt this. I know this. When certain people appear in my life, something ancient in me turns toward them the way a plant turns toward light. The feeling is real. What I’ve had to learn, slowly and painfully, is that intensity is not the same as love, and longing is not the same as belonging.

I have confused these things more than once.

My Uranian nature — that part of me wired for independence, for freedom, for my own orbit — may have found a quiet arrangement with my fantasies. Crushes kept at a distance are safe. Longing for someone who isn’t available doesn’t require me to show up fully, to be truly known, to risk being too much. I could love from the cave and call it devotion. I could pour my life-force into the space between us and call it connection. What I was really doing was keeping love at arm’s length while telling myself I was reaching for it.

My Capricorn rising asks for integrity. My Taurus Sun asks me to come home to myself. Both are earth — solid, patient, rooted. Both have been waiting for me to stop abandoning them in the rush toward someone else’s warmth.

The letter I wrote — and kept returning to, softening, editing — is my best attempt at deepening layers of self-honesty. I was able to see, eventually, that I was never really trying to be a friend. I was trying to hold on in whatever way I could. That clarity cost something. It also gave something back: the energy I had been pouring outward, for years, began to have nowhere to go but home.

My chart’s North Node sits in Libra at the very top of the sky — my vocation, my direction, my calling. Libra is the artist. Venus rules it, and in my chart Venus lives in the realm of communication and beauty. My work is creative. My work is relational. My work is making something true and beautiful and offering it outward. What I’m learning is that this is where my relational gifts belong — channeled into art, into expression, into the things I make — not endlessly poured into the hope that one specific person will finally turn and see me.

There is a grand trine in fire in my chart: vision, inspiration, the courage to believe in something. And Saturn holds it — the craftsperson, the one who says: make it real. Build it. Don’t just dream it. I think the invitation has always been to bring that same fire and that same discipline to the work of loving myself. To be as faithful to my own becoming as I have been to my longing for others.

I once imagined the dynamic as a massive crack in the earth — an impossible divide. Then I saw it differently: I had been living in a cave, making truth from what little light I could see, not knowing what existed beyond my view. My prayer now is to find my way out. To discover what love looks like in the open air, where I am not hiding, not waiting, not tending a private world of stories.

I came in with a map. It has always been pointing me toward myself.

At some point, I tried to say all of this directly. I wrote something I wasn’t fully ready to understand yet.

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Dear Person,

When I think about you—or something you’ve said to me, or that I might want to say to you—I can feel myself start get foggy and begin to spiral. My body reacts with a kind of inner chaos: excitement, confusion, unclarity. It feels out of control.

When I’m around you, I often feel unsure and insecure. I find myself working hard to be liked or interesting enough for you to want to stay. There’s a recurring sense that there’s a time limit—like at some point, you’ll be done and ready to go—and I start anticipating that before it happens. I notice that I feel you seek me out when you want or need something, and then you leave once that need is met. I’ve rarely had the courage to ask directly for what I want, partly out of fear of rejection, and partly because I don’t trust that I won’t feel like a burden. When I have asked, you’ve sometimes shown up and helped, and I appreciate that. But most often, I stay quiet and wait for you to come toward me.

The truth is, I can get thrown off course for days or even weeks after interactions with you. On one level, I know it’s because I so deeply want your love, attention, and validation. The moments when I receive those things feel incredibly good—and also incredibly rare and unpredictable. That leaves me feeling desperate, needy, and heartbroken. I long for a kind of care and steady presence that I realize I don’t currently have in my life, and sometimes I’ve tried to make you that person, even though you’ve been clear that you’re not, and that I’m not that person for you.

I see how I’ve tried to make something fit that doesn’t. That’s not love; it’s not friendship—it’s grasping, trying to shape reality into what I wish it were. I’ve told myself I could grow through it, that someday I’d be strong enough to handle it differently, but it hasn’t happened. I still find myself easily hurt, disappointed, and spinning stories in my mind about how I want things to be.

And maybe, honestly, I never wanted to “be your friend.” Maybe I was trying to hold onto you in whatever way I could. I’ve been caught in this question—Do you care about me? Am I important to you?—and even asking directly hasn’t brought clarity. I can see that sometimes my ways of trying to understand that have been unhealthy or manipulative, but the outcome is the same: I don’t know where I stand. Maybe I cling to the uncertainty instead of accepting reality. And living in that uncertainty finally feels like something I don’t want to do anymore.

I see how much of this comes from my own insecurity—how I compare myself, how jealousy creeps in, how I keep hoping things will change. I’ve been having an ongoing internal tantrum about it, trying to hide it, and it’s exhausting. The whole pattern I’m recreating is toxic for me. I see and feel my patterns of co-dependence and often feel powerless in it where you are concerned.

That said, there are so many things I genuinely love and appreciate about you. When I’m with you, I can feel incredible joy, warmth, and connection. There is nothing else like your hugs or how it feels when you cuddle me. Few people seem as excited to see or hear from me as you seem to be. I love hearing your thoughts, your stories, and learning small glimpses of the way your mind works. I’ve wanted more of that because it feels good. But I haven’t shown that I can handle it well or stay in my own energy. I’ve dropped things that matter to me, bent myself out of shape, and lost track of my own center just to make space for time with you. That’s on me. It’s not sustainable.

I don’t feel like I’m healing in this dynamic. I don’t feel like I’m moving closer to the kind of love I want in my life. In fact, I see that I can’t move toward that love without letting go of the hope that it could come from you. I know that might have been obvious for a long time, but this is the moment where I’m really accepting it and taking action.

I feel regret about some of the ways I’ve handled things, though I truly was doing the best I knew how. I’ve believed that honesty and vulnerability were the path toward real connection. I think that’s true, but I’ve struggled to be honest and vulnerable with myself in this instance. Whatever it is that I cannot yet see or understand has felt confusing and painful.

It finally occurred to me to try giving up. And then stick to that decision anytime I think I might want to try again. To remember that I decided to give up. 

No matter how much I may feel that I love you and want to be in your life, I have to love myself more and be honest with myself. Being a friend to myself, I let go of all the ways I was trying to be in your life. The truth is that I never had to try to be your friend, but I wanted to try to be more than your friend. It was a long misguided effort that I told myself was love, but it wasn’t. That might be the saddest part.

I think of all the energy and life-force I poured into the space between us. I wonder about the other ways I could have used that energy. The lesson I can learn for now is to love and honor myself more.

Love,
Abby

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I sometimes come back to this to read and edit the parts where I observe myself telling stories that aren’t true. Each time I am able to see a few more threads and continue to soften even as I keep moving forward. Disappointments of the heart can be very powerful and enduring, I have so much compassion for myself. 

Recently I changed the image from a massive crack in the earth which felt like an impossible divide, to a view of the water from inside a cave. I’ve been in the cave making truth out of what I could see, not thinking about all that exists that I could not see. My new prayer is to find a way to exit the cave or the box I’ve been living in where love is concerned. 

What I see now is that I was never trying to understand him. I was trying to find myself. And I kept looking in the wrong place.