No Cigar have a really cool sound.

I was just listening to Some Nights by FUN. and a song with the same title was next in line. So – thinking it was a cover – I added it to my queue. It’s most definitely not a cover but it’s fucking groovy, man.

I’ve peeled another layer of the onion.

The ‘being seen’ wound.

This explains a lot, if not everything.

It started out very innocently – a digital friend offering an unconditional ear.

Identification of subtextual pain.

How can one you don’t physically know, see the pain that those in close proximity to you turn a blind eye to?

A quick search on reddit confirms what I was thinking.

I have received praise, attention and empathy in my life, but none of it can make up for the lack of from those who raised me.

To receive all the accolades under the sun, but it doesn’t touch the void just behind the sternum. I don’t want your praise, I just want you to sit down and listen. and maybe give me a hug.

Even now, it’s too much to ask.

They turn a blind eye, because acknowledging my pain highlights their pain. Presumably. I mean, it is generational trauma.

All the boys I’ve chased, I’ve just wanted someone who would see me deeply and care about the emotions I couldn’t verbalize.

You don’t really have the same time investment with friends – once the ball is rolling it doesn’t take long at all for the vulnerability to come up, but friends can be fickle – a sudden change in circumstances or meeting a new love interest. Suddenly you’re on the backburner.
It’s almost funny that I don’t see romantic pursuits in the same vein, because they really don’t owe you anything.

It’s kind of funny because I chastise myself ‘why do you think you want a bf when you really don’t. You hate men’. This blog fills the void of having someone to talk to and the rest I have covered.

I know I’m not perfect by any means, right. I enjoy my face to face interactions with people to be light and glossy, to rejuvenate rather than deplete.
I still struggle with the tension conflict brings and I try to avoid it. It seems I keep people at an arms length so I can maintain this way of being.

Because there is so much, so deep and I tend to it in a very careful way, peeling the band-aid off hair by hair. Bringing someone else into this territory is unpredictable. What if they rip the band-aid straight off and you have to deal with the shock?

It evokes the memory of a friend telling me how I’d been a really bad friend lately (June 2024). ‘You’ve been out exploring a lot lately’. She claimed I hadn’t been there for her and it really hurt her.

She didn’t know how much I had been suffering myself. Crying everyday and getting away on the weekends was a survival mechanism.

But that’s the thing. It’s so heavy to dredge up, only to have the other person back out and say they weren’t expecting it. May as well leave it tucked away.

This is so the opposite of what Brene Brown says in Daring Greatly haha but fuck man. What’s a girl to do.

I’m still so annoyed with that friend – she simply didn’t see me.

Looking back, that relationship was just me seeking out a familiar pattern.

That’s a lot of the reason why I don’t have interpersonal relationships.

I don’t really know if I can find completely neutral relationships that aren’t built on unhealthy conditioning.

Anyway.

I don’t think I wrote about this, because I got embarrassed at the time haha. But I was seeing someone before I took off on my great adventure. Because I was going, we were literally just friends, but unfortunately a romance developed. Classic – me spilling my guts because I don’t see this going anywhere, but that’s the ultimate vulnerability that is required in a relationship. Fuck sake!

Because I generally don’t like boys and refuse to romanticize or potentialize situations, this really struck me. He seemed genuine and had some musings about a shared future that seemed really genuine… I shook it off, but once I left I realized what was.

We have kept in touch a little but I think it’s something that is best left in the past, because it’s obviously gone cold and now it’s time for me to break the pattern of chasing someone who doesn’t see me.

Let them.

If they wanted to, they would.

‘Sorry I’m terrible at keeping in touch’ but if you wanted to you would. I know this is really petty and I should just express what I want to express, but my pride is very staunch these days. I have put myself out there enough times to learn that if they wanted to, they would and I don’t need to listen to their reassuring half-truths.

The shitty thing is, this person is in a similar situation to me and I feel okay sharing my troubles because he would understand, rather than someone who is in a conventional lifestyle. and I’m just interested in what he’s up to as well.

But oh well. His loss.

That’s another thing I was never modeled.

Gosh I’ve had to learn some things the hard way.