The Shape of Absence

Sometimes I imagine the ordinary.

Being born into a supportive, loving family.
Working in places that value integrity, consistency, and care, not just in theory, but in practice.
Friendships rooted in mutual attunement, reciprocity, and understanding.
The ability to confide in others and feel held, not managed.

From what I’ve observed, these things are fairly common.

For me, imagining them feels like ordering from a menu, only to be told the kitchen has no ingredients.

Instead, I was born into neglect and abuse, and conditioned early toward self-abandonment.
Basic human decency and compassion were treated as indulgences rather than necessities.

I worked under managers and systems that rewarded minimum effort while extracting everything I had to offer.
Recognition was scarce. Favoritism was routine. Toxicity was normalized. Gaslighting was fluent.
Reasonable emotional responses were treated as liabilities, slowly eroding my self-worth and well-being.

Friendships followed a familiar pattern.
I became the caretaker. The translator. The one who overextended and overperformed.
I learned to compress my feelings into palatable sound bites only to be ignored, minimized, or met with quiet discomfort.
Acknowledgment, when it came, was often thin and fleeting.

When I shared my lived experiences, my trauma, my nerve endings — they were rarely met with support.
More often, they became a manual for destabilizing me more efficiently.

So I find myself longing for the mundane things many take for granted.

I know no life is perfect.
But most people seem to have some access to these qualities — some measure of safety, consistency, or care.

As I heal, my pattern recognition sharpens.

Loneliness paired with emotional depletion and a growing allergy to shallow connections has made isolation and self-reliance my default form of regulation.

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