On familiar patterns, loneliness, and the quiet work of choosing yourself
I sit in my reading chair, covered in blankets with the AC on full blast. My eyes ache from lack of sleep. Somewhere in the near distance, alarms. Rockets overhead. The turbulence of the world has moved closer to home than I would like — canceled flights and nothing to look forward to.
I’ve gained a few pounds. Unable to find the motivation to move my body.
And beneath all of it, loneliness. That particular feeling that says: If only I had someone, a partner, then things would be different. Then life would mean something. But it won’t.
Disappointment after disappointment has proven that no one can fill the emptiness within. Only being with the feelings — without condemning myself, without resisting what’s unfolding — can do that. Just being in it, feeling into it.
Closing my eyes, breathing into the place from which the anguish originates.
And yet, here I am again.
Trying not to focus on the bad parts of people.
I know most negative behavior comes from hurt, from fear, from trauma. But when someone keeps crossing your boundaries, something in you wants to scream from the rooftops.
Especially when you’re faced with someone narcissistic, manipulative, and so deeply immature that you can’t quite understand how you got yourself wrapped up with them in the first place.
Why do I keep stepping into the same puddle, ruining my best dress?
I stand here, splashes of mud all over, and I have no one to blame but me.
He has shown me who he is, time and again. He is disrespectful, and his motives have never been clean.
So why can’t I accept it? Why am I still drawn to this?
It’s not even physical. If anything, he repels me. But there’s something… intriguing. I’m watching a story unfold that I know I should walk away from, but I stay, just to see what happens next.
Maybe because it’s familiar, it echoes something that lives within me, something I haven’t fully let go of.
So I come back to the present moment, to this morning. To what I can control. I have a long to-do list. Laundry. Changing the sheets. Cooking. Then I reach for the things that have always known how to find me when I’m lost. Painting. Writing. Reading. I must make time. Get immersed in the exploratory creative rituals that have, on many occasions, brought me out of a slump. Helping me feel accomplished and process my emotions.
But the mind goes back.
I want to believe there is good in him. That somewhere, beneath all of it, something real exists. A flash. A glimpse. Something human. But this time — it won’t be me who tries to resurrect it.
I’ve witnessed the truth too many times. There is no love here. No respect. His motive always lingers in the background, and eventually, in a moment of unfiltered weakness, it reveals itself. And still, I hesitate to accept it.
I don’t want to be the thing he uses, like an addict reaching for the next high. There is an emptiness in that — in people who confuse desire with connection, who chase romance as a way to feel worthy, to escape loneliness, to prove something to themselves. And in doing so, they stop appearing human.
It’s subtle at first. They seem normal. Present. Engaged.
You think they see you. You think they value you. And then something changes.
And you realize — there was only ever one thing driving them.
And yet my heart doesn’t harden. It’s been broken by disappointment too many times; what remains isn’t bitterness — it’s a kind of quiet. Our understanding of love is deeply misunderstood. We’ve turned it into something transactional, desperate, consuming.
Romantic love cannot give you what you’re looking for. Not validation. Not relief from loneliness. Not proof of your worth. And so, in the end, compassion rises. Not anger. I let go of what I hoped it could be, and I accept what is.
I take a deep breath and remind myself — the day is not over. I can still do my workout. And maybe that’s enough. Not a resolution.
Just me, choosing myself again.
Before you reach for the next thing that isn’t quite right for you, there’s a two-minute practice that changes the quality of everything that follows. Not by fixing anything. By choosing how we show up. Free download
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