#writing-through-it

There’s a specific kind of ache that shows up after the scene — not in my skin, but in my chest. Not in the places they bruised, but in the silence that follows. The scene ends. The bruises settle. And they leave. Or go quiet. Or send a single, detached message that doesn’t touch the part of me that’s still open. That’s still bleeding a little.

What follows isn’t sadness — not exactly. It’s discontent. Restlessness. Like something in me refuses to settle. I get fidgety. Distracted. I scroll endlessly or pace or look for something to fill the space they left behind. Not because I expect love or permanence — I’ve stopped asking for those — but because something in me still wants to know: Did I matter? Did it mean anything? Am I still real to you, now that your desire has cooled?

I’ve called things casual more times than I can count. I’ve convinced myself I can handle no strings, no expectations, no care. But the truth is, casual doesn’t mean weightless — not to me. It feels like constant anticipation, like waiting for the other shoe to drop. I think, as much as I hate the feeling, I may be addicted to it. The burn of not knowing. The high of being wanted for a moment and the crash of being forgotten the next.

What I want after a scene isn’t complicated. It’s not ownership or forever. I just want to be held and told I mattered. I want someone to see me — not just the performance, not just the body bent to their will, but the part of me that opened, that softened, that trusted. That’s what submission is to me. It’s not just the dynamic — it’s the decision to let someone that close, that deep, and hope they handle it with care.

But what happens when they don’t? When they disappear? When the bruises fade and the only thing left is a void where their voice should be?

It brings up everything. It brings up every moment I’ve been too much to stay with but not enough to choose. It reminds me of being a little girl who begged for someone to want her — to take her in, to keep her safe — and hearing over and over again that there wasn’t room for her. No space. No plan. Just rejection dressed up as logistics. Where would you even go? He doesn’t have space for you. He lives with his cousin.

So now when someone ghosts after they’ve been inside me — after they’ve marked me — it doesn’t just hurt in the present. It hits something older. Something bone-deep. Something that says, You were always going to be too much to hold onto.

But I still keep offering. Still keep hoping that maybe this time, someone will know what to do with all of me. Not just the soft skin, but the loud feelings. The need. The hunger for tenderness. The part that isn’t casual, even when I pretend to be.

And when they don’t — when they vanish — I’m left trying to carry both the intimacy and the aftermath alone. Trying to soothe something that keeps reopening. Trying to convince myself that needing care doesn’t make me weak. That I deserve to be held, even if the scene is over.

I chase people who aren’t emotionally available to me. Always have. The ones who tell me they’re detached, casual, noncommittal — and somehow that only makes me want them more. I tell myself I accept it. That I know what I’m walking into. And in some ways, I do. I don’t ask for more. I don’t make demands. I try to play it cool. But even when I’m quiet, it still gets heavy. Some part of me always starts to hope they’ll surprise me.

I think it’s the magnetic pull of something I’ve never really had: care that stays. Attention that lingers. The kind that doesn’t disappear the second the physical part ends. I crave it like oxygen, but I keep chasing it in people who can’t breathe with me.

After a scene, when I don’t get held — when they get dressed and shift back into someone who doesn’t know me — it feels like being left in solitary confinement. Like I just gave something soft and aching, and now I have to clean it up by myself. My chest tightens. My body goes into this quiet panic, but I try to look unaffected. I open apps. Scroll. Make myself busy. Pretend I’m not unraveling.

I tell myself I can handle casual by staying hidden. I don’t talk about myself much. I keep it light. Flirty. Playful. I let them learn my body without ever really learning me. Because that’s what makes it bearable — if I don’t let them all the way in, then maybe it won’t hurt when they don’t stay.

But it still does. Every time.

There’s a version of me that still wants to say it out loud. Please stay a little longer. Please hold me a little tighter. Please don’t leave me alone in the silence you made. But I never say it. Because I don’t believe they’d respond well. Because I’m scared they’d pity me. Because part of me still thinks if I need that much, I’ll scare them off sooner.

And if someone ever did stay? I think I’d be in denial. I don’t think I’d know how to receive it. I’ve built my entire internal world around the assumption that people leave — and that if they don’t, it’s because they’re waiting to.

I’m not even sure what “safe” would feel like. But I know what almost-safe feels like. I know how to wrap myself around someone else's want. I know how to make them feel powerful, desired, satisfied. I just don’t know how to be wanted in a way that doesn’t disappear by morning.

So yes — it’s not the scene that hurts. It’s the silence after. The way I become invisible the second my usefulness is over. The way they leave my bed, or my messages, or my mind, while I’m still curled around the moment like it mattered.

Because it did. Even if they don’t remember.

why I can’t just shake it off

When someone leaves right after a scene, it doesn’t just register as rejection — it registers as abandonment. That’s not just emotional, it’s biological. The body stores intimacy as threat or safety, and mine has learned to flinch when the safety disappears without warning. The comedown after a scene already mimics the physiological aftermath of trauma: elevated cortisol, adrenaline tapering off, vulnerability hanging in the air. Add silence — or a partner who disappears — and it becomes a kind of emotional whiplash. My body goes from held to hyper-alert, from “I’m safe” to “something bad happened” in seconds.

This is what trauma-trained brains do. They try to predict and protect. They prepare for the worst because it has been the worst before.

So when someone disappears after intimacy — even if it’s “casual” — my system reacts like I’ve just been punished for opening up. It mirrors what I learned in childhood: closeness is conditional, care is fleeting, and needing anything will make them leave faster.

This is why I get attached to unavailable people. Not because I don’t see the red flags, but because the pattern feels familiar. I’ve been emotionally starving for so long that even a small flicker of attention feels like nourishment. I know it’s not safe, but it’s predictable. I know how to hurt in this shape. I know how to brace for rejection disguised as affection.

And here’s the part that still guts me: even though I’m aware of all this — the trauma loops, the emotional flashbacks, the way I shrink to be more palatable — I still get caught in it. I still chase people who don’t have space for me. I still hope that if I ask for nothing, they’ll choose to give me something.

Because what I want — what I’ve always wanted — is to be wanted on purpose. Not out of convenience. Not out of impulse. But because someone sees the whole mess of me and doesn’t flinch.

Dear Dad, I don’t know how to start this because I still don’t know how to talk to you. You’ve been gone for over a decade now, and I’m still afraid of saying the wrong thing. Afraid it might sound like blame. Afraid it might sound like begging.

I want to ask you why. I want to ask you if you thought about me. If you thought about what it would do to a 14-year-old girl to find out her dad chose to disappear.

I wish I could tell you I’m okay now. That I’ve grown up into someone who’s fully healed. That I don’t still carry this ache into every other loss, every fight, every time someone pulls away without explanation.

But that wouldn’t be true.

I still flinch at abandonment. I still get scared when people go quiet. I still don’t always know how to trust that someone will stay.

I think about the way you used to smile. I try to remember your voice but it’s fading. I hate that. I hate that I’m forgetting the pieces of you that didn’t hurt.

There’s a part of me that always wonders if I wasn’t enough. Even though I know better, I know better, that voice still lives in me.

You missed so much. I went to rehab. I got sober. I started writing. You’d be surprised by how much of you I see in myself—sometimes in ways I’m proud of. Sometimes in ways I’m afraid of.

I’m trying, Dad. I’m trying to let go of the shame. I’m trying to keep going, even when I feel like disappearing too.

I hope wherever you are, you see me. I hope you’d be proud. And I hope you’re finally okay.

Love,

There are days I feel trapped inside my own head. Like I can’t stop analyzing everything—every feeling, every interaction, every flicker of discomfort. It used to feel helpful. Like I was working toward self-awareness. Like if I could just understand myself enough, I could finally fix the ache.

But lately, it doesn’t feel like healing. It feels like overthinking dressed up as progress. Like I’ve made a habit of turning pain into meaning, even when it just needs to be.

It’s exhausting. This need to explain myself to myself. To dissect every emotion until it feels productive. I catch myself trying to turn sadness into insight, shame into language, discomfort into clarity. Like if I don’t name it, it’ll swallow me. Like staying inside it will keep me safe.

But sometimes, introspection stops helping. It becomes another form of control. Another way to manage the chaos by narrating it. And I get tired of being the narrator.

I want to just feel things without analyzing them. I want to cry without writing a caption in my head about what it means. I want to have a memory without picking it apart for lessons. I want to live instead of always trying to make sense of it all.

There’s a difference between reflection and rumination. I’m still learning how to tell them apart.

Some days I wish I could just turn the volume down. Tell my brain it’s okay not to chase every thought to the root. That it’s safe to let some things be unnamed. That not everything has to teach me something.

I hate the way I crave attention. Always have. It feels embarrassing. Like something I’m supposed to outgrow. Like a secret I should be ashamed of.

Growing up, “attention-seeker” was the worst thing you could be. It wasn’t just an insult—it was a dismissal. It meant your feelings weren’t real, just performances. It meant your pain didn’t count because you were doing it for show. I internalized that hard. So I learned to swallow things. To minimize. To pretend I didn’t need much. That I was chill. Low-maintenance. Strong.

But the truth is I do want to be noticed. I want people to care. I want someone to ask how I’m doing and actually mean it. I want to be chosen, checked in on, considered. And when that doesn’t happen, I spiral. I start wondering what’s wrong with me that I still want that kind of attention so badly.

Sometimes I post things and immediately regret them—not because they weren’t honest, but because I’m afraid people will see it as a grab for validation. Like I’m pathetic for wanting to be witnessed.

But I’ve realized something: Wanting attention isn’t wrong. It just means I want to matter. It means I want my inner world to be met with presence instead of silence.

And yeah, sometimes I crave attention in messy ways. I over-explain. I overshare. I get loud when I’m hurting. I look for signs that I’m still worth holding onto. I’m working on it, but I’m also trying to forgive myself for it.

Because the real shame isn’t in wanting to be seen. It’s in the way the world taught me that wanting that made me weak.

So I’m unlearning that. Slowly. Unevenly. I’m trying to give attention to the parts of me that have always gone ignored. The parts that didn’t get soothed. The parts that shouldn’t have had to scream just to be acknowledged.

And if sometimes that comes out in a post, or a quiet cry for someone to notice—I’m not going to beat myself up over it anymore.

Content Note: This post includes references to alcohol misuse, blurred consent, sexual trauma, and self-blame. It may be difficult to read for those with experiences of assault or substance-related harm. Please take care in choosing whether to continue.

Sometimes I think about how he found me. Sitting in the office lobby, middle of the day, drinking a cutwater out in the open like I wanted to be caught. And maybe I did. Maybe I was trying to self-destruct loud enough that someone would finally intervene. Or maybe I was just… exhausted. From hiding. From holding it together. From pretending I wasn’t drowning.

He said he had to get me away from the office before anyone saw me like that. He walked me to my car. He called a coworker to bring my things. And I thought, maybe this is someone looking out for me.

But then he kissed me. And I kissed him back. And then I told him we shouldn’t do this. And then he said he was married. Had kids. And then I said we really had to stop. And he didn’t.

I remember him sucking on my nipples, and I remember holding his head closer. And I hate that memory. Because I don’t know if that means I said yes. I don’t know if my body meant yes. I know I was drunk—slurring, swaying, sitting in my own mess. I know I’d just told him I was an alcoholic. I know I was not in a place to choose.

And still—I blame myself more than I blame him. That’s the part I can’t shake. The part that keeps me from naming it clearly. Because what if I did say yes? What if I wanted it for a second? What if being wanted felt better than being pitied?

What I do know is this: after it happened, I didn’t go home. I didn’t rest. I drove drunk. I totaled my car. I got assaulted again. I got arrested. I went to jail.

So if it was consent, it was the kind that leads to collapse. If it was choice, it was the kind born from shame and self-destruction. And if it was sex—it didn’t feel like mine.

I wish I hadn’t been drinking. I wish I’d told her to wait it out, to sit still until it passed. But I didn’t. And it didn’t.

And now I’m left wondering—not if it happened, but if it counts. If I count. If my story is still mine even when I’m not sure what to call it.