For most of my life, I thought I was extroverted.
I thought I loved noise.
Loved people.
Loved being the loud one in the room.
Loved staying busy.
Loved helping.
Loved being needed.
But recently I’ve started realizing something uncomfortable:
I wasn’t energized by constant stimulation. I was surviving through it.
My nervous system lived in activation for so long that I mistook activation for aliveness.
When I didn’t feel good, I numbed it:
with alcohol,
food,
smoking,
drugs,
people,
caretaking,
noise,
relationships,
being needed.
I stayed moving so I didn’t have to feel what was underneath.
Now all of that is gone.
And what’s left is me.
Just me.
And honestly, that has been both beautiful and heartbreaking.
Lately I’ve been realizing how many of my relationships were built around what I could do for people instead of who I actually was. I became the helper, the listener, the emotional support system, the fixer, the organizer, the giver.
I put other people first for so long that it became my identity.
So now, learning boundaries feels unnatural.
Painful.
Almost wrong.
Not because boundaries are wrong, but because my nervous system was trained to believe:
good people sacrifice themselves for others.
And now I’m learning something different.
I can be kind without carrying everyone.
I can be loving without abandoning myself.
I can help without becoming responsible for everyone else’s life.
That middle ground is hard.
Really hard.
Especially when you start realizing not everyone thinks about other people the way you do.
Sometimes it’s little things:
a kitchen,
a driveway,
a shared bill,
noise,
clutter.
And you suddenly realize:
this is how unconscious most people are.
Not evil.
Not malicious.
Just unaware of how they affect others around them.
Once you see it, you can’t unsee it.
And I think that’s why I’ve been crying so much lately.
Because I’m grieving.
Not just relationships.
Not just people.
I’m grieving an old version of myself.
The version of me that believed love had to be earned through overgiving.
The version of me that stayed activated all the time.
The version of me that felt needed but never truly rested.
And now I’m realizing something else:
I don’t think I was ever meant to stay in such a small emotional environment.
Not because I’m a “big fish in a small pond.”
Honestly, that phrase doesn’t feel right anymore.
I don’t feel bigger than anyone.
I just feel like a regular fish that desires the ocean.
More space.
More peace.
More depth.
More stillness.
More intentionality.
More room to breathe.
More room to grow without constantly adapting myself around chaos.
I think that’s what this season is teaching me.
Not how to become someone else.
But how to stop abandoning myself.
And maybe that’s what spiritual growth actually is.
Not becoming louder.
Not becoming more important.
Not becoming more impressive.
Just becoming more aware.
Like Samuel sleeping near the ark, growing simply by being near something sacred over and over again.
Maybe we become what we stay near.
And maybe for the first time in my life, I’m finally learning to stay near myself.