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.
—
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.
—
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
p.s. the cuffed shop carries everything built around the work.
p.p.s. musing no. 106 is coming.
if you’re not subscribed,
you’ll come in mid-turn.
p.p.p.s. <3 you dab.