Emotionally Moved Out, Still Paying Rent
Bye Is a Holy Word: the courage to end things
Quick question, people: Have we forgotten how to part ways—or is it just me?
To me, it feels like the art of separation (true, conscious, and dignified) has been lost in a world obsessed with preservation. Between hoarding followers, networking like it’s currency, and calling every fleeting bond a “connection,” we are taught to accumulate connections like possessions.
So I couldn’t sleep last night, caught in a loop, asking myself why.
Why does it feel so hard (almost unnatural! ) to part ways with people, even when the connection has quietly expired? Why do I feel like a villain for wanting space, or a coward for not asking for it directly?
I have never been good at endings. While I can navigate existential matters, confront metaphysical death through Buddhist meditations, and sit with the impermanence of the self, when it comes to saying goodbye to others, I falter. I have never initiated a break-up. I have never told a friend, “This is no longer serving me.”
Just Say You Don’t Like Me Anymore—It’s Hot
I remember this one friend who straight-up broke up with me. Politely, directly, like a fully functioning adult. It blew my mind. She told me her reasons and bounced. I was stunned, then weirdly grateful. I admired her more than I’ve ever admired anyone who stuck around out of obligation or performed fake-nice for the sake of “peace.” It was so clean. No resentment. No guesswork.
I guess, being neurodivergent, this kind of clarity (real, direct, no-fluff clarity) does me a lot of good. When someone tells me, “This doesn’t work for me anymore”, regardless of whether it’s coming from self-respect, spite, immaturity, or whatever, it weirdly soothes me. It feels clean. Like a boundary I don’t have to guess at. I’ll take that any day over the slow-burn torture of passive-aggressive, emotionally immature dynamics where people can’t handle a drop of honesty, even when it’s meant to help things grow. That kind of stuckness simmers under the surface, and I feel it like static in my nervous system.
My struggle has never really been about being around people or understanding them. My high-masking brain creates these little avatars for everyone I interact with, based on their interests, emotional bandwidth, body language, tone shifts, the way they phrase things. I build entire versions of myself to match what I pick up.
Emotionally Moved Out, Still Paying Rent
But the other side of the coin is… I get bored. Deeply, achingly bored.
The performance wears me out. I keep up the avatar long after the spark’s gone. They’re still interacting with the version of me I built for them, while internally I’ve already packed my bags and moved on to a new obsession, a new book, a new existential spiral. And then I’m stuck: either I ghost (coward), tell the truth (villain), or keep pretending (martyr). None of them feel great.
What actually fries my circuits is this pretending… pretending I’m still emotionally there when I’m not. Staying in relationships where, honestly, I’ve mentally drifted. Not because anyone did anything wrong. It’s just... me.
So it boggles me: why can’t I just cut them off when I’ve already emotionally moved on?
Like, I know I’m done. I know the connection’s expired. But something in me still hesitates. I freeze at the edge of that decision, like I owe them continuity even though I’ve already disappeared on the inside. Maybe it’s guilt. Maybe it’s the “nice girl” programming. Maybe it’s just the awkward heartbreak of admitting I’ve changed and they haven’t. But the pause is real. And in that pause, I keep pretending.
The paradox is rich: internally, I am decisive. I sort the world into constellations of trust and disinterest, of connection and quiet exile. But I speak none of this. Out loud, I preserve. I nod, I adapt, I stay. Because once, I was raised in a home where relationships were not evaluated for their quality, but their duration. To leave, even when survival demanded it, was “cruel.” And to be “too much” was always a greater sin than to be unloved.
The thing is, I really understand why people behave the way they do. Sometimes too well. I psychoanalyze people all the way to their inner child, pick up on the tiniest cues that betray who they truly are (voice pitch, micro-expressions, how they answer a text) and then I feel weirdly tender toward them because... I get it. I get them. It doesn’t mean I always enjoy being around them. But I understand. And here’s the double-edged sword. I want people to be real with me, to say what they actually think, feel, need. I respect it, even when it stings. Because I do the same. Honesty is my love language, even if it’s awkward or messy. ! But when I’m around someone who I know won’t get it, someone who doesn’t have the range, I shrink. I calibrate. I lower myself. Not because I’m unsure of what I think, but because I already know exactly how they’ll react. I preempt the defensiveness, the shutdown, the misinterpretation. And so I mask, I simplify, I play small…. Instead of just… leaving. I think maybe I feel like goodbyes require a socially choreographed moment, some kind of proper scene, with timing, tone, maybe even a script. And I’m not well-equipped for that. The best I can do is settle these notions conceptually, lean on past thinkers to explain what I can’t intuitively grasp.
Bye Is a Holy Word
On love, fear, and the courage to end things without apology.
My favorite, Erich Fromm, wrote about this… how love, when distorted by fear, becomes compulsion. We preserve love not because it is alive, but because we dread its absence. And so, we remain entangled… not with others, but with our image of ourselves as “good.” The good daughter. The good friend. The good partner. We forego authenticity for continuity, even if it breeds neurosis.
But to live without boundaries is not love—it is fusion. And fusion is the enemy of freedom.
Women, in particular, are taught that harmony is virtue. Simone de Beauvoir named the ambiguity of our relationships, where the desire to be seen collides with the terror of rejection. Harriet Lerner writes of women who were conditioned to fear anger, to silence their truth in service of being “nice.” Even the smallest assertion can feel like betrayal. And so, we become skilled in endurance, and deficient in exit.
The Jungian shadow tells us we have disowned the very parts of ourselves that can protect us. The part that says, “No.” The part that walks away. The part that is willing to be seen as “cruel” in order to remain whole. Healing requires not the killing of that part, but its integration. To say: I can be loving and I can leave. I can care and I can end.
Trauma teaches us to hold on until we’re bleeding. Healing teaches us that closure is a practice, not an event. That we can part ways without rage or blame. That letting go, when done in honesty, is a form of love. Not toward the other, but toward the self.
Microgoodbyes
So here’s where I land. I keep coming back to this one idea ( from Fromm, obviously, bless his beautifully intense brain) that to love is to will the growth of another. And I do believe that. Deeply. But staying when growth is no longer mutual? That’s not love. That’s fear playing dress-up as loyalty. That’s attachment in a virtue costume. And I’ve worn that costume for far too long.
I’m the one who always gives one more chance. One more nudge. One more spark of belief in what someone could become. But that, too, has a cost. When you love people for their potential, you can forget to see them clearly in the now. And that’s on me. I own that.
I’ve realized I need people who can grow fast, like, spiritually sprint. Curious minds, emotionally intense hearts, people who are a little unhinged in the best possible way. People who are both interesting and interested. (I used to think that was asking too much. Now I understand it’s just how my AuDHD brain works. I crave depth, speed, novelty, and fire. I’m wired for it. But with that wiring comes the high-masking. The pretending. The performance of still being “in it” when I’ve already emotionally exited stage left. Smiling through the boredom. Coddling the low-vibe conversations when I’m screaming for something real.)
So I’m trying something new. No more self-abandonment in the name of peace. No more dragging the performance past its closing scene. Just microgoodbyes.Small, clean choices to let go, with kindness, but also with clarity.
One honest micro-bye at a time.