They don’t like you

I swear nothing is more powerful than the human mind. The way I have to constantly fight my own intrusive thoughts like flies in my face should earn me a medal. For over a year of realizing how much this method of escapism from my own life has hurt me in so many ways, you’d think that I’d find relief that I’d officially be seeing my LO less.

Of course it’s never that easy.

The fantasies are already curating as I type this very sentence. The what ifs are forming, the dopamine is bubbling in the distance. He doesn’t like me—but what if?

But what if I just don’t care anymore? What if I decide to focus on my life and find joy in myself? What if I make true connections in others so that I don’t attach myself to the wrong people? What if it doesn’t always end up in limerence?

When I am at my lowest is when I crave him, or the idea of him, the idea of comfort I’ve never been given because I’ve had to fight hardships alone. I come home to emptiness, or the weight of anxiety and stress, and then I go to work, and he’s there, and I have to decide to fight every thought of him for the entire shift.

My mask is in shambles. I’m barely being held up by a string. And on top of it all my mind goes straight to the fantasy of him, because it’s better than reality right?

I tell myself ‘just two weeks’ and I’ll be on a completely different shift from him after asking to be moved for over 8 months. And as I drag myself through the personal struggles of my life outside of limerence, maybe I can find another way to cope than to attach a feeling to someone who is physically and emotionally unavailable.

Maybe I won’t have to go through this again. Maybe I can learn to nourish myself in ways I’d never do this again. Maybe I can heal enough that I can distinguish what’s real or not. Maybe I can finally tell myself that they don’t like me and move on.