Catch Me If You Can: The Struggle to Let Someone In
I have always played this game with myself. One where I consistently remain victorious. If they stay, I win. For I am loved, and to be so is glorious. If they leave, I win. For I have proven myself unloveable, as I secretly aim to test.
It’s a flawless system. Setting the trap, watching them walk into it. Waiting for the inevitable moment when they’ll either prove their devotion or confirm my greatest fear.
I tell myself it’s self-preservation, but the truth is, I am not winning. I am just making sure I never have to really lose.
Stay, Stay, Stay
There is a guilt which consumes me whenever I try to trace behavioral habits back to my childhood because to question what is meant to be unconditional parental care feels almost criminal, devilish.
I was ferociously loved as a child. I am privileged in this. No matter what, at the end of the day, this fact holds superiority and truth over all else. On that note, however, I find myself extensively adding a preface, a disclaimer, before I am able to even slightly analyze specific moments in my developmental stage that may have impacted my ability to love others today.
Eleven years old and sitting on the steps with a backpack on, waiting for my weekly house swap. Wondering why all my belongings remained in a singular household, permanent to one and mobile to another. Why, on Fridays, I carried multiple bags throughout my classes, unsure of how to answer when people asked what they were for. The idea festered that love is unstable. Arguments lead to separation.
I grew up believing myself a ghost to people. Someone would tell me how much I meant to them and I never took it to heart. Not only afraid of commitment in romantic dynamics—I truly didn’t believe any relationship to be reciprocal.
Leave Before They Do
At 16, I finally became everything to someone. I think this is what I consider to be both the worst and best part of falling in love for the very first time: you fall without a safety net. You do not see pain on the other side. You do not see it ending. Ever.
And then, eventually—as all things do— it ends. It’s done so in a way that brings up a past, present, and future fear of abandonment.
The person who had placed you on a pedestal left you wordless in a grave. The two of you dug it deep together, ignorant to the shovels in your blistered hands. Ignorant because neither of you have witnessed this ego-death before, so it is fresh and it is gory.
Alone and beneath a carved tombstone, clawing my way through tightly packed dirt not yet covered by grass and mud, my heart decided to forever remain in its flatlined state.
Now, I look at chances of love from the eyes of a child with a backpack of her belongings and a teenager risen from six feet below ground. Wary, so wary, I hold this thought: “I am not someone worth staying for.”
It would be a lie to say this habit began after the heartbreak, that I am now scarred in his absence, because he was, in truth, my very first victim.
I stopped begging for his responses, stopped arguing, stopped calling first. I stopped crying over not hearing from him for an entire day. We both were emotionally detached. And on the last day, I drove the blade in and twisted. I hurt him— knowing that if I didn’t, it would be him hurting me. After this, the second I felt someone even slightly distance themselves— whether real or in my head— I’d remove myself. I chased the unavailable (a frat boy, a college athlete) because that was safe. Easily prepared to leave, a place where my bags remained packed and ready.
When someone doesn't “choose” me, doesn’t stay, I feel smug. It hurts and it is cruel, but it is more important I am right in that I am a gruesome, hideous creature. Hard to love with teeth bared.
To Overcome
Just having been a new relationship (hence the choice of topic), I tried my best to allow myself to enjoy it, to let myself be vulnerable with someone. Every part of me screamed that it was wrong and he was a temporary happiness. Which, no and yes.
When I pushed him away, he pulled me closer. When I grasped strings for an argument, sure that his returning anger would be leeway, he was kind and communicative. And when I tried to create a reason for an inevitable end (long distance or study abroad or this one specific choice of his), I was distraught at the thought of it happening.
The solution, as horrifying as it sounds, was to let it play out. To not self-sabotage. To not play my game and pray he leaves, just for the sake of proving that they all do.
It is daunting to be aware of how relationships end. The excruciating pain that awaits, looming. This time, the shovel in my hand is visible, every move apparent. A grave to be stepped into willingly.
There is the choice to evacuate, sure. To forever run away from loving and being loved.
Or the choice (the much scarier one) to persist, to heal the wounds head-on. Knowing your words have an impact on another person and using them for good, for assurance rather than harm. And knowing their words have an impact on you and not hating this fact.
Which sounds worse? Relinquishing control? Or never allowing yourself to really feel something?
As Richard Siken wrote, “Someone has to leave first. This is a very old story. There is no other version of this story.”
As a child, I found myself often wondering if the fairytale endings seen in movies were what really happened. If, after the camera cuts, the princess and her love interest go through a devastating fight and break up. If one cheats or becomes a deadbeat, alcoholic husband.
I can never let what is good simply be good. There has to be angles and empty promises. Unsaid acts and festering resentment. I do not know what it feels like to let something good exist without ruining it first. To not poke and prod, searching for cracks. To not leave before I can be left.
What if love can just be love, though? What if a person truly can find you deserving of their time and attention? And there is no betrayal? If (trying to avoid saying “when”) it ends, it will ache and sore, but it will pass, and you will live letting someone know you.
Because to be known is the greatest gift. It's why I write these. I urge people to know me, to see me. I want the thoughts I pluck from the depths of my brain and soul to be understood by others. And liked.
And so, with someone, you must soften, must think of them with fondness rather than fear. Trust and love and fall into it. If all fails, you can win in a different way. A win that comes with taking advantage of all that is to be felt when alive.
The trick with letting someone in, I assume (I’m new to this, please be gentle), is to not let thoughts carry weight in your actions. To be able to love is a privilege (this is what they tell me. This is what I also know deep down). You are worthy of love (no matter what the voices whisper to you in the dark).
