Somewhere along the way, I learned how to calm myself down by reaching for someone else. Not consciously or manipulatively. Just instinctively. Like a reflex. When my chest got tight or my thoughts got loud or the day felt too heavy, I would find a person and sit inside their presence until the storm passed. Sometimes it looked like friendship. Sitting on a couch with laughter and conversation that made the world feel softer. Sometimes it looked like intimacy. Skin against skin, bodies moving, breath syncing, and for a moment everything inside me would go quiet. Regulated. Settled. Held together by someone else’s energy.

I didn’t realize I was outsourcing my peace. I thought I was just connecting. I thought I was just living. I thought this was what people did, lean on each other, distract themselves, find comfort in company. And maybe that is part of it. But for me, it became more than comfort. It became dependence. Not on a specific person, but on the feeling they gave me. The relief. The silence inside my head. The way my nervous system would exhale when someone was there to absorb the weight I didn’t know how to carry alone.

There were friendships that felt like medicine. Nights where laughter filled the space so completely that sadness didn’t stand a chance. There were men who offered touch, attention, desire, and in those moments, my body would forget everything it was holding. The anxiety. The loneliness. The pressure of being strong all the time. Being wanted, being held, being distracted; it felt like regulation. It felt like healing. But it wasn’t healing. It was borrowing.

Borrowing calm, stability, even peace. And borrowed things always have to be returned.

So when they left, or got busy, or pulled away, or when the night ended and the house went quiet again, everything I had pushed down would come rushing back. Louder. Heavier. Waiting for the next person to carry it for me. The next conversation. The next hug. The next body. The next distraction.

It wasn’t about love or sex.
It was about regulation. It was about not knowing how to sit with myself when my emotions got loud.

Nobody taught me how to do that. Nobody showed me how to breathe through discomfort or hold my own feelings without running from them. So I did what made sense. I reached for connection. I reached for people. I reached for anything that made the noise stop.

But lately, something inside me has shifted. Not dramatically… Not perfectly… Just quietly. A small voice that says, Stay here. Stay in the feeling. Stay in the discomfort. Stay in the silence. Don’t run to someone. Don’t numb it. Don’t distract it. Just sit with it until your body remembers how to calm itself.

It’s uncomfortable. Sometimes it feels lonely. Sometimes it feels like I’m doing life without a safety net. But it also feels honest. It feels like strength that isn’t borrowed from anyone else. It feels like learning how to hold my own hand instead of reaching for someone else’s every time the ground starts to shake.