Raspberry Iced M

I used to stay busy. Not always “productive,” but occupied. Distracted. Entertained. Emotionally entangled.

Anything that kept me from being alone with my thoughts. And because so much of my distractions had a purpose – work, travel, etc. – I didn’t have to face that the fact that it was avoidance. I just called it “life.”

It isn’t always obvious. Sometimes avoiding yourself doesn’t look like running away. For me, it looked like needing noise. Needing company. Fixating on something dramatic. Doing a project. Doom scrolling. Even positive things, like tending to others’ needs. Anything that would not expose what was underneath.

And I think I did it because being alone felt uncomfortable. I didn’t want to sit in loneliness or regret or insecurity or emptiness. I didn’t want to ask questions for which there were no answers. So instead of sitting, I moved around them. Repeatedly.

But only as I’ve looked back have I realized how expensive it was to avoid myself. It cost me clarity, because not slowing down to examine my life caused me to repeat patterns I didn’t understand. It cost me peace, because distraction can numb discomfort, it can’t create stability. It cost me relationships, because unresolved pain leaks into how we love and how we attach. And it cost me time, because years and years passed while I was busy outrunning something that lived inside me.

And alongside all of that is the realization that the biggest disadvantages lie in the fact that I do not know myself. Almost four decades of constant movement, and I have no idea who I am.

I know my preferences. My roles. My routines.

But not my motives. I didn’t know what drove me, what wounded me, what I feared, what I was trying to prove, or what I was using people to soothe.

And that kind of ignorance is dangerous.

So eventually, I do what most almost-40 year old people do. I got tired. Tired of pointlessly trying to fill a void. Tired of running, juggling, crying.

It was almost an “aha” moment. Distractions lost their power. The patterns became too obvious to ignore. And the consequences became real. And I was left to face the very person I kept postponing – myself.

That’s a brutal meeting. But it was also a holy one.

A few weeks ago, after explaining to my therapist how I felt about something, she asked me a very pointed question: “What if you just sat in that feeling for a little while?”

No dismissal. No reaction. And no running.

Observation only.

I couldn’t answer that question, but I noticed a fear welling up inside me. She wanted me to just allow a feeling to exist? That’d be a first for me.

So I tried it. And I hated it. But I tried it again. And again. And again.

And these days, facing myself isn’t so noisy or complicated.

I sit in silence sometimes. I notice my reactions. I tell the truth – to myself and others – about my choices. And I just feel. I feel emotions without immediately escaping them.

I ask myself questions like, “Why did I do that? What am I seeking? What am I afraid of? What needs healing?” And those questions are uncomfortable, but they’re also freeing.

Avoiding myself for so long delayed growth more than any outside circumstance ever did. The problem didn’t lie solely in what once “happened” to me. It was how long I refused to meet myself honestly.

But the only thing more expensive than wasting the last 39 years on searching for an unachievable comfort is the continuation of my search.

So now, I stay. I sit. I notice. And try to get to know myself truthfully. Because the person from whom I kept running is the only person I need to learn to live with.