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you either die a lover or live long enough to see yourself become avoidant

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i was such a weird lonely little girl and maybe i grew to be a weird lonely woman but idc i built this life for myself and maybe it doesn’t always make sense to others and maybe isn’t always easy or beautiful but it is mine and i cherish it

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Ottessa Moshfegh, Eileen

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by Feodor Rojankovsky, 1936

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Craving balance and never reaching it is a laughable irony I’ve come to know all too well. It seems stitched into the human condition. We ache for what we can’t hold, each of us bent toward different extremes.

I’m never satisfied.

I crave rollercoasters I can’t exit,

nights that bleed into days,

but I also long for stillness.

A quiet rhythm, a routine I won’t break.

This balance unnerves others.

To me, it feels like home.

Too much of one or the other

and the whole thing fractures.

They used to say,

“You’ll grow out of the wild nights.”

Maybe I’m not old enough.

Maybe it’s something I’ll always chase.

The strange comedy of it all is that I seek people who live on either end. Never in the middle.

The wild ones draw me in like flame,

but burn too hot when they stay too long.

They won’t slow down.

They shouldn’t have to

not for me.

Even though all I want is for them to stay.

The steady ones,

they terrify me in a different way.

Maybe that’s the insecurity I don’t name,

but when they can’t keep pace,

I run.

I always run.

It’s a sick kind of self-sabotage.

A push and pull.

A refusal to settle.

A longing for closeness

while keeping everyone at arm’s length.

The wild ones never let me in.

The stable ones, I won’t let them close.

It’s a lose-lose,

an echo chamber of almosts.

People will do anything no matter how absurd, to avoid being truly seen.

And I’m no different.

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Sometimes, in the early hours of morning, I wake in a panic, thinking you’re still here. I look left and settle, even though the air still tastes of your presence; like rain wrung from bone.

The birds in the field behind the house praise the sun rising on the horizon. They sing as if nothing is missing. As if the world hasn’t cracked in half and swallowed you whole. They return every spring, just as you once did. But at last, you left and never returned.

The sun is merciless though. It persists in rising, but never erases your residue from the sheets.

I wait for the grief to pass. It never does.

You live in the margins.

In doorways.

In dreams that forget themselves.

In every breath that can be caught, but never held.

The echo of your silence is seared into my brain.

You haunt me like a shadow without a body to cast it; only the memory of warmth and the ache of what’s gone.

You are poison in my heart, a ghost endlessly lingering.

It doesn’t matter how desperately I try to let you go, I have become you.

— avoidant tendencies 5:34 AM

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bitch this is all you’re gonna get. this life, this face, this body. you better not ‘maybe in another universe’ your way out of everything. sit your ass down and face this. go make tea and have a picnic and read a goddamn book. kiss your loved ones, send that damn text, and hug your siblings. this is all you’re gonna get.

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esther

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