Catch Me If You Can

‘Psyche Revived by Cupid’s Kiss’, 1787 statue by Antonio Canova. Le Louvre, Paris, France.

March 25, 2025

I play a game with myself. If they stay, I win, for I am loved. If they leave, I win, for I have proven myself unlovable, as I secretly aim to test. 

It’s a flawless system, waiting for this 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, as I see it, lose.

Stay, Stay, Stay

When I try to trace behavioral habits back to my childhood, questioning unconditional parental care, I feel almost criminal, devilish. 

I was ferociously loved as a kid. I am privileged in this. No matter what, at the end of the day, this fact holds superiority and truth over all else. I find myself extensively adding this preface and disclaimer before I am able to analyze specific moments in my developmental stage that may or may not have impacted my ability to love others today. 

Nine 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, stuffed under a desk, unsure of how to answer what they were for.

Relationships, to me, were, at their core, unstable. Arguments lead to separation. Hatred fills in the gaps. Divorce isn’t the issue; I was much too young to know anything else. The “issue” is then in having no image of partnership to look up to, to idealize. No concept of romance, of even enjoying the other’s company.

I grew up believing I held no impact. A friend could tell me how much I meant to them, and I never took it to heart. Not only just afraid of commitment in relationship dynamics, I truly didn’t believe any feeling of mine to be reciprocal.

I felt like that tree in a grand, expansive forest. Falling with no ears of witness. A shell of unobservable sound.

Leave Before They Do 

At 16, I found an ear, a heart, a being, to witness me. 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 hurt on the other side. You do not see it ending. The idea of such is inconceivable.

And then, eventually, as all things do, it does end. And this so-called abandonment, this leaving, is the worst pain imaginable. It tears into you, out of you.

The person who reciprocated for the first time in my life left me wordless in a grave. The two of us dug it deep together, ignorant of the shovels in our blistered hands. Ignorant because neither of us has witnessed this ego-death before, so it is fresh and it is gory. There is blood everywhere. So much so, I could not see the wounds. Whose was whose.

Alone and beneath a carved tombstone, clawing my way through tightly packed dirt not yet covered by grown-over life, my heart would remain unbeating, cold

Now, I look at love from the eyes of a child with an extra backpack, and a teenager with Earth in her lungs.

Wary, so wary, I hold onto the 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 drove the blade in and twisted. I hurt him, knowing if I didn’t, it would be him hurting me. After this, the second I feel someone even slightly distance themselves, whether real or in my head, I remove myself.

I chase the unavailable because it is safe. I keep my things packed in suitcases by the door, ready.

When someone doesn't “choose” me, doesn’t stay, I feel smug. It hurts, but it is more important to me that I am right in that I am a gruesome, hideous creature. Hard to love with teeth bared, growling.

To Overcome 

Just having been in my first relationship since then (hence the choice of topic), I tried my best to allow myself to enjoy it, to let myself be vulnerable with someone. It was short-lived, barely counts. Every part of me screamed it was wrong, that he was a temporary happiness. I was right. I won. Again.

He was kind and communicative. I tried to craft a reason for an inevitable end (long distance or study abroad, or a million names for it).

As horrifying as it sounded, I was supposed to let it play out, not self-sabotage. Not play my game and hope he’d leave, just to prove that they all will.

It is daunting to be aware of relationships ending. The excruciating pain that awaits is 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. Is it worse to relinquish control, or to never allow yourself to feel anything?

As Richard Siken wrote,

“Someone has to leave first. This is a very old story. There is no other version of this story,” (The Worm King’s Lullaby, 2015).

As a child, after every Disney film, I found myself wondering if the fairytale endings were real. If, after the camera cuts, the princess and her love interest go through a devastating fight and break-up. If one cheats. If they lose feelings in the years to come.

I can never let what is good simply be good. There have to be betraying acts and festering resentment. I do not know what it feels like to let something good exist without ruining it first. 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 hidden cruelty? If (trying to avoid saying “when”) it ends, it will ache and be sore, but it will pass, and you will live with the pleasure of someone having known you. 

To be known is the greatest gift. It's why I write these blogs/ essays. I urge people to know me, to see me. I want my soul to be understood by others and liked. 

With someone you must soften, must think of them with fondness rather than fear. If it does end tragically, it can be a kind of win you have never known. A participation trophy of sorts.

The trick with letting someone in ( I assume. I’m new to this), 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).