my nervous system can't tell the difference between a gun to my head and a real connection
the price of peace is loneliness...right??
Life felt like an emotional tornado when I was younger. Nothing was stable. I was either too much or not enough, constantly shifting to fit into spaces that seemed to shrink the moment I got comfortable. Every friendship felt like a high-stakes game I didn’t understand the rules of. Every connection a fragile thread that I clutched too tightly until it snapped. People let me down, and I let them down, too. And over time, all the reaching, all the fixing, all the trying, it wore me out.
It felt like I was clawing through life just to stay steady, and failing anyway. I lived in this constant state of emotional vertigo, never grounded, always spinning. The chaos wasn’t just around me; it was in me. I hated the version of myself that surfaced in those moments. The desperation. The sensitivity. The way my heart took everything so personally, so deeply, as if every disappointment was a reflection of my worth.
And then, one day, the chaos stopped.
But not because something magical happened. Not because I healed or “grew up” or figured it all out. It stopped because I turned the volume down on everything that made me feel anything too deeply. I stopped making friends. I stopped investing. I stopped caring. Slowly, and almost without realizing it, I began to withdraw, not from the world entirely, but from the parts of it that could reach me.
In college, I became the kind of person who was friendly with everyone, close with no one. The kind of person who laughed in the dining hall and joined group chats but never showed up when it really mattered. I had lukewarm, easy friendships, surface-level connections that required no vulnerability. They kept me safe. They kept me from spiraling. I told myself that was peace.
But it wasn’t peace. It was a controlled burn.
I wasn’t cured. I was empty.
I thought I had found balance, but really, I just removed all the pieces of life that could knock me off balance in the first place. I didn’t build strength, I built walls. And now, post college graduation, I’m starting to realize just how much I lost in the process.
I look at the people around me, old high school friends who still talk, still hang out, still let each other matter, and I feel like I’ve failed some invisible test. Like i’ve proved them right. I see new friendships, tight-knit groups who know each other’s favorite coffee orders and biggest fears, and I wonder what they see when they look at me. Do they think I’m just shy? Quiet? Standoffish? Or do they know that I’ve been hiding? That every time I kept my distance, it was because I was terrified that if I let people in again, they’d remind me why I stopped trying in the first place?
The truth is, I’ve tried. Over and over. I’ve gone to therapy. I’ve read every self-help book that promised to fix me. I’ve looked in the mirror and whispered, You are worthy of love, even when I didn’t believe it. I’ve practiced vulnerability in rooms full of strangers, hoping that if I could just say it out loud enough times, it would finally become real.
And still, most days, the loneliness feels like the lesser evil. It’s sharp, but it’s predictable. It stings, but it’s clean. It doesn’t confuse me the way people do.
But I can’t pretend it doesn’t hurt. I can’t lie to myself and say I don’t want what other people have. Connection. Belonging. Inside jokes. Support. I want those things more than I know how to admit. And yet, I keep pushing them away. Because somewhere deep inside, I’ve convinced myself that being distant is the only way to stay in control.
And the worst part? I know I did this to myself. That’s the part that stings and soothes in equal measure. The loneliness isn’t some tragic thing that happened to me. I built this silence. I chose it. And because I chose it, I find a strange kind of comfort in it.
“That way if something goes wrong, if someone rejects you, then it’s not about you, is it? When you’re yourself, that’s when you’re exposed. Vulnerable. But if you hold back . . . Losing a game’s always painful, but knowing that you haven’t played your best hand makes it bearable.”
— Ali Hazelwood, Love, Theoretically
That quote feels like Ali Hazelwood crawled into my soul and grabbed the feeling and wrote it out. Because that’s exactly it. I’ve haven’t played my best hand in a LONG time. Not really. I’ve always kept a part of myself hidden, tucked safely away. And maybe that’s why none of my connections ever truly stuck. Maybe they weren’t lukewarm because the people were wrong, maybe they were lukewarm because I never turned up the heat. I never let myself be fully seen.
It’s easier to lose when you know you weren’t all in. But it’s also lonelier. So much lonelier. I don’t have a resolution for this. I don’t have a neat ending to wrap it up. This isn’t a post about how I fixed it all or figured it out. It’s just me saying: I see it now. I see what I did. I see why I did it. And maybe, that’s the first step toward something different.
Sometimes I try to remind myself that maybe the chaos wasn’t all me, that some of it was just being a teenager. Being young and raw and overwhelmed by everything. It’s easy to forget how much of my pain came from not knowing who I was, or what I needed, or how to ask for it. I’m not that girl anymore. But sometimes it feels like she’s still right there, just behind my eyes, waiting to be unleashed and vindicated. I feel her most when I get close to people. When I start seeing someone often, when I begin to care, that’s when I sense her stirring. The panic, the self-sabotage, the desperate need for control. I don’t know if she’ll ever really go away. Maybe I just have to learn to live beside her, to hold her hand and remind her we’re safe now.
Maybe one day I’ll be brave enough to risk the chaos again. To reach out, even if my hands shake. To play my best hand and sit in the discomfort of being truly known.
But today, I’m just sitting with the truth: peace came at a price. And sometimes, I’m not sure it was worth it.
With Love,
Your local brown girl :)