the door i never opened | musing no. 105

i used to think it meant staying calm. now i think it means making sure the people you love don't have to pay for the wars happening inside you.

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the architecture of self: musing no. 101 → musing no. 102 → musing no. 103 → musing no. 104 → musing no. 105 → musing no. 106 → musing no. 107 → musing no. 108 → musing no. 109 → musing no. 110 → musing no. 111 → musing no. 112 → musing no. 113 → musing no. 114 → musing no. 115

the architecture of trust: musing no. 90 → musing no. 91 → musing no. 92 → musing no. 93 → musing no. 94 → musing no. 95 → musing no. 96 → musing no. 97 → musing no. 98 → musing no. 99

the architecture of control: musing no. 74 → musing no. 75 → musing no. 76 → musing no. 77 → musing no. 78 → musing no. 79 → musing no. 80 → musing no. 81 → musing no. 82 → musing no. 83 → musing no. 84 → musing no. 85 → musing no. 86 → musing no. 87 → musing no. 88 → musing no. 89

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i know this material.

i’ve read it.

i’ve studied it.

i’ve written about it.

and i still have to sit with what it shows me

about myself.

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the first thing it shows me is the punishments.

small ones.

deliberate ones.

ones i designed to be deniable.

if i didn’t get what i wanted —

not always something big,

sometimes just a drink,

a gesture,

a moment of feeling seen —

i’d find a way to subtract something.

i’d answer shorter.

be slightly colder.

withhold warmth just enough

to make the room feel different.

and then i’d watch to see

if they noticed.

i always wanted plausible deniability.

so i kept them petty.

so i could say it was nothing.

so i could say they were imagining it.

but i knew.

i always knew.

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the harder one is withdrawal.

not the petty kind.

the full kind.

i never fully let dabatha in.

that’s the part i have to own first.

there was always a door i kept closed.

a version of me she was never given access to.

and for a while that felt like protection.

but when she was going through something difficult —

when she needed me to be present —

i couldn’t hold her weight

and my own unexpressed interior

at the same time.

so i withdrew.

i asked for space.

and i have not stopped regretting that.

not because space was wrong.

but because the real reason i needed it

was that i had never learned to carry myself

and someone else

at the same time.

and she paid for that.

a man who hasn’t let someone in fully

has nothing to draw from

when she needs him to show up.

you can’t give from a room you’ve kept locked.

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if you want to understand the mechanism behind what i just described —

the neuroscience, the three-stage regulation window,

the action protocol —

red room directive no. 43 is where that lives.

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and then there’s where the avoidance comes from.

i was always the calm one in the room.

or so it looked.

but that calm wasn’t regulation.

it was absence.

i hadn’t done the work on my own interior —

hadn’t named what i was carrying,

hadn’t sat with what i felt —

so the moment someone else

brought their emotion into the space,

i had nothing to stand on.

no regulated ground to meet them from.

so i left.

not because they were too much.

because i hadn’t dealt with my own.

avoidance isn’t about the other person.

it never was.

it’s what happens when you show up to a fire

with empty hands

and no one ever taught you

how to carry water.

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emotional regulation isn’t a concept i needed to learn.

it’s a mirror i needed to look into.

and what i saw

was a man who punished quietly,

withdrew when it mattered most,

and called it self-protection.

i used to think

emotional regulation

meant staying calm.

now i think it means

making sure the people you love

don’t have to pay

for the wars happening inside you.

— author

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p.p.s. musing no. 106 is coming.

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