Emotional Relapse and Next Steps
Journal entries from Summer 2022 to the end of September retrograde
I decided earlier this year that I’m not going to allow myself to be an experience anymore, but it’s easier in theory than practice. That type of resolution requires boundaries that I’m still learning how to build. Rejection is my trigger, and I get overwhelmed trying to understand how infinite choice can be ethically applied to relationships, particularly in cases where I am not the one doing the choosing.
Giving someone else that much power over me, knowing how it affects me, how it will make me feel, seems counterintuitive. When I leave a situation, I often tell myself that the person was using me, or that they were about to. It pedestalizes me, making it easier to walk away at any time.
Calculating utility is how people strategize their decisions, and so if someone is deciding to not have me around, my utility was not high enough. People are allowed to decide they do not want you in their life.
There have already been a few people this year who’ve justified my exit strategy reasoning. Some of them were blaringly obvious — in Spring, I thought I was making friends with another writer, and then found the notes they’d been taking on me for a potential character profile. About me, they wrote, “she’s very vulnerable almost over sharing, because it’ll make people feel closer to her; perfectionist; wounded child; depression.” A few weeks later, they asked me if I’d want to cowrite and act in their autobiographical short about a creative boy who finds himself through the women he keeps around him. I, he proposed, would play the pining female best friend, obviously in love with the protagonist while he discovers himself with the help of his girlfriend. I wasn’t so surprised that he saw me in this reductive, infantile way, but I was livid with him and myself for the power I’d given him. I made the choice to enter a space and run my mouth. I was flattered by someone’s interest in my life, and in doing so, had lost control. The fact that he thought I’d be flattered a second time with such an inaccurate summization of who I am — was hurtful. This is why you do not tell people your business.
They did, however, think to include one context point I had said during our initial conversation, “I’m tired of that character,” I’d said, referencing how exhausted I’ve become of talking about sadness, in therapy, online, anywhere where someone else gets to pathologize my emotions in a way I would not choose to. Men find sad girls and female pain morbidly alluring, and I’d sooner die than enable someone other than myself to profit from my emotional fetishization. That was the framing through which I had shared any of it in the first place, to clarify the type of character creation I don’t want to participate in.
This one was an easy choice—walk away. This person actually was using you, and you’re not healed enough to take control over that situation. There were some other choices that were harder. I lost somone who I once considered to be my best friend this year—she’s alive, just dead to me. Shortly after our relationship ended, I became bothered by every sighting of her on social media, not just because of the words left unsaid or remaining questions about what went wrong, but because she was repeatedly out wearing clothes I’d given her. I couldn’t forgive that she was materially leaving the relationship with more than I was, and that I was an active participant in her newfound bounty. I saw her wearing a dress of mine, then a top I’d given her when we were still in a good place. I began to fixate on the old couch I’d given her and her roommate. I frequently pictured myself going into their apartment and slicing the cushions so that nobody could enjoy it again. I was obsessed and felt like I was owed. This particular brand of “bitterness” (the only word I can think of to describe this feeling) does not bother me. People occasionally feel bitter just like they can sometimes get angry or cold or any other fleeting feeling that doesn’t define the entirety of who we are as a person. I am allowed to be angry and want my shit back. I am allowed to be bitter.
I blocked both of these people, the writer friend and the dead friend. I can’t be bothered by what I don’t see, and only know how to heal in a vacuum. These types of slights have been happening in sequence lately, in combination with several others I don’t have energy to write. I don’t think they are isolated instances and are indicative of shift in how I am relating to other people. There have been several occasions this year alone where I have felt insulted or walked over or deliberately misunderstood and they’ve imbalanced my scale. I’m angrier than usual. I ruminate on ugly, vengeful feelings instead of the nice ones I know I am capable of. I know I’m not a bad person or a victim. Scared maybe, which I have never denied. And despite how good I am at being alone, I want to relate to others. I want and deserve community. I do not deserve to be in pain. I am finding new ways to feel good that don’t involve anyone else at all. The days will be short soon, and I refuse to allow a repitition of last year. When I am sad, I will move. I will not let the feelings overpower me. I will not allow others to make me feel things. I am stronger than that.