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I Told Everyone Before I Knew What I Felt... and Paid For It · Toxic Girls Zone

0:03
Speaker 1: Hey, welcome back. I'm glad you're here, I genuinely am.
0:06
Speaker 1: And I have to tell you, this one is different
0:08
Speaker 1: from what we usually do. No framework waiting in the wings,
0:11
Speaker 1: no numbered lists, no tidy structure I'm going to walk
0:14
Speaker 1: you through. Just a story. My story. And it's a
0:17
Speaker 1: little embarrassing, which you know by now means it's probably important. Okay,
0:22
Speaker 1: so this past week I was buried. My partner and
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Speaker 1: I were doing paperwork. The kind that takes over a
0:26
Speaker 1: whole table and then somehow takes over your whole life. Forms,
0:29
Speaker 1: shared documents, things that needed signatures in three places. My
0:32
Speaker 1: partner was sitting across from me in reading glasses I
0:34
Speaker 1: genuinely did not know they owned. Like, we live together, right?
0:37
Speaker 1: And somehow this was new information. Very cute. Very alarming.
0:41
Speaker 1: And our dog, our rescue, who came with the personality
0:43
Speaker 1: of a small dramatic CEO, she had made herself a
0:45
Speaker 1: bed on the exact stack of papers we needed. Right?
0:48
Speaker 1: She just looked at us like, yeah, I'm comfortable. What
0:50
Speaker 1: are you going to do about it? She actually chewed
0:52
Speaker 1: the corner off one of the documents. And honestly, she
0:54
Speaker 1: was doing us a favor. That form was two pages
0:56
Speaker 1: of fine print in a trap. So that was the week. Glamorous.
0:59
Speaker 1: We are thriving. I'm telling you a story today, no
1:03
Speaker 1: framework coming first, just something that happened. This one is
1:06
Speaker 1: personal and a little embarrassing, and I kept it to
1:08
Speaker 1: myself for a long time, which is genuinely funny given
1:10
Speaker 1: what it's about. So grab an iced coffee, get comfortable,
1:13
Speaker 1: because by the end, you're gonna wanna think about who
1:15
Speaker 1: you've been texting about your love life and exactly why.
1:18
Speaker 1: I'll say this up front as a little warning. This
1:20
Speaker 1: is the episode I needed years ago. I didn't have it,
1:22
Speaker 1: so I had to live it instead, which took longer
1:24
Speaker 1: and cost more. You might recognize yourself in here, and
1:27
Speaker 1: that's okay. That's the whole point. I used to share
1:30
Speaker 1: everything about every relationship, the moment it started, before I
1:33
Speaker 1: even knew how I felt. I told my mom on
1:35
Speaker 1: Sunday calls. I told my best friend in voice memos
1:37
Speaker 1: sent from parking lots and bathroom stalls. I told coworkers
1:40
Speaker 1: at the status meeting I already hated. And then the
1:42
Speaker 1: relationship would end and I would have to untell all
1:44
Speaker 1: of them. Explain the ending, absorb their relief or their disappointment,
1:48
Speaker 1: manage the feelings they had caught for me like a cold.
1:51
Speaker 1: I didn't realize for a long time what I was
1:52
Speaker 1: actually doing. I thought I was processing. I thought sharing
1:55
Speaker 1: was how you figured things out. I had done three
1:57
Speaker 1: years of weekly therapy. I had the books on the shelf.
2:00
Speaker 1: I used words like integration at brunch. I was not processing.
2:03
Speaker 1: I was outsourcing. Right? There's a difference. And it took
2:06
Speaker 1: me an embarrassingly long time to see it. The trip
2:08
Speaker 1: I'm going to tell you about is when I finally
2:09
Speaker 1: saw it. So picture this. I'm on a quiet flight, alone,
2:14
Speaker 1: bag overpacked the way I always overpack, because I'm convinced
2:18
Speaker 1: I will need four different kinds of shoes, journal open
2:20
Speaker 1: on my tray table, and I'm writing about something new
2:23
Speaker 1: in my life, and I stop mid-sentence, and I realize
2:25
Speaker 1: I have already told four people about this thing before
2:27
Speaker 1: I've told myself how I feel about it. Four people.
2:29
Speaker 1: Four people. I had given them updates, context, my interpretation.
2:33
Speaker 1: Their interpretations had come back to me, and I had
2:35
Speaker 1: absorbed those too. And somewhere in the middle of all,
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Speaker 1: that my own quiet first feeling had just gotten lost.
2:42
Speaker 1: I wrote in the journal, and this is me, actual me,
2:44
Speaker 1: my own handwriting on the page. I don't even know
2:46
Speaker 1: what I think yet, and somehow everyone already has an opinion. Yeah,
2:50
Speaker 1: that one landed. My mom, by the way, I had
2:52
Speaker 1: given her a full character analysis of a man I
2:54
Speaker 1: had been on two dates with. Two dates. She had
2:57
Speaker 1: named him. She had given him a name based on
2:59
Speaker 1: my description and was using it in conversation. I will
3:02
Speaker 1: absolutely not be telling you what she named him. That
3:04
Speaker 1: secret goes with me. But the fact that she had
3:06
Speaker 1: gotten there, that I had given her enough material to
3:09
Speaker 1: get there after two dates, that tells you everything about
3:11
Speaker 1: where I was. Now, this wasn't where the pattern started, right?
3:15
Speaker 1: The pattern started way earlier. Let me take you back
3:18
Speaker 1: a little because the flight was the moment of clarity,
3:20
Speaker 1: but the airport was just one stop on a very
3:21
Speaker 1: long road. This started at 17 with my first boyfriend.
3:25
Speaker 1: I told my whole friend group the day after our
3:26
Speaker 1: first kiss, like, They knew before I had even processed
3:29
Speaker 1: what I felt standing there. By the time I was
3:31
Speaker 1: in my 20s, chasing men who would not quite commit,
3:33
Speaker 1: men who were kind but a little out of reach
3:35
Speaker 1: in a way that somehow felt familiar, I had built
3:37
Speaker 1: a full broadcast system. My mom every Sunday, my best
3:40
Speaker 1: friend in real time, and a group chat with running
3:42
Speaker 1: commentary that would make a reality show producer blush. I
3:45
Speaker 1: thought this was closeness. I thought this was what it
3:47
Speaker 1: looked like to be open and healed and communicative. The
3:50
Speaker 1: trip was a work thing. A conference in another city,
3:53
Speaker 1: first time alone in a while. I remember sitting at
3:55
Speaker 1: the gate, my phone went off, a voice memo from
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Speaker 1: my best friend. She needed to hear everything about the
4:00
Speaker 1: new situation I had mentioned. And I opened my mouth
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Speaker 1: to record back and just... nothing. Not because I was
4:05
Speaker 1: hiding anything. Because I actually didn't know what I felt yet,
4:08
Speaker 1: and I had already described it to three people that
4:10
Speaker 1: week as if I did. That silence was the beginning
4:13
Speaker 1: of something. So I bored alone. No partner, no dog underfoot,
4:18
Speaker 1: no familiar smell of whatever my partner was cooking in
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Speaker 1: the kitchen. Just me and a journal I had bought
4:22
Speaker 1: specifically because it was a different color from the one
4:24
Speaker 1: at home, which in retrospect is such a me move.
4:26
Speaker 1: Like I thought the color would give me a fresh perspective.
4:29
Speaker 1: I start writing and what comes out is not about
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Speaker 1: the conference. It's a list. Every person I had told
4:34
Speaker 1: about every significant relationship in my 20s, what they had said,
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Speaker 1: whether I had let those responses steer me. And the
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Speaker 1: answer to that last one is yes. Almost every time.
4:42
Speaker 1: Makes sense, right? Here's the one that really got me.
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Speaker 1: My best friend had gone quiet on me once on
4:47
Speaker 1: purpose for a week. Just stopped answering my texts about
4:50
Speaker 1: a man I was seeing. I had been furious. I
4:52
Speaker 1: thought something was wrong with our friendship. On that plane
4:55
Speaker 1: I wrote, she was trying to give me back to myself.
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Speaker 1: She had seen what I was doing before I could.
4:59
Speaker 1: My dad came to mind too. Kind man, worked long hours,
5:03
Speaker 1: always there when it mattered, but his inner life was
5:05
Speaker 1: private in a way that could feel like distance when
5:06
Speaker 1: you were small and wanted in. I had overcorrected so
5:09
Speaker 1: far in the other direction that I had turned my
5:11
Speaker 1: love life into a group project. I had a spreadsheet
5:13
Speaker 1: of opinions. Not literally, but emotionally, absolutely a spreadsheet. Every
5:18
Speaker 1: cell filled in by someone else. And here's the thing
5:21
Speaker 1: about the signs that were there for years before that flight.
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Speaker 1: I just thought they were normal. When I started dating
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Speaker 1: someone new, I felt this urgent need to name it
5:27
Speaker 1: out loud to someone before the day was over. If
5:30
Speaker 1: I didn't tell anyone it felt unreal, like it hadn't happened,
5:32
Speaker 1: like I hadn't been there, I would be on a
5:34
Speaker 1: third date still deciding how I felt. And my mom
5:36
Speaker 1: had already built a whole opinion about this man based
5:38
Speaker 1: on my first report from date one. Then I would
5:41
Speaker 1: change my mind and I had to manage her feelings
5:42
Speaker 1: about that too. There was a text I sent my
5:45
Speaker 1: best friend in my early 20s that I found when
5:46
Speaker 1: I was rereading old journals on that trip. I had
5:49
Speaker 1: photographed it at some point, which, okay, I archive a lot.
5:52
Speaker 1: This is not the point. The text said, okay, so
5:54
Speaker 1: I think I like him, but also I need you
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Speaker 1: to tell me if I should. Read that again. I
5:59
Speaker 1: need you to tell me if I should. I was
6:01
Speaker 1: asking her to feel my feelings for me. She wrote back,
6:03
Speaker 1: I think you already know. And I ignored that completely
6:06
Speaker 1: and kept asking. I sent like four more messages. Sound familiar? Yeah,
6:11
Speaker 1: I thought so. Another sign I missed for years. Every
6:14
Speaker 1: time a relationship ended, I felt this second layer of
6:17
Speaker 1: loss that wasn't about the man at all. It was
6:19
Speaker 1: about having to retire the story I had been telling everyone.
6:22
Speaker 1: The relationship had become a shared object. It lived in
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Speaker 1: other people's heads, right? It had characters and plot, and
6:28
Speaker 1: everyone had cast themselves in a role. Breaking up meant
6:30
Speaker 1: disappointing an audience. It meant a whole press tour of explaining.
6:34
Speaker 1: And sometimes I stayed in things a little longer than
6:36
Speaker 1: I should have because I didn't want to do the
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Speaker 1: press tour. I didn't know that at the time. I
6:40
Speaker 1: thought I was being careful or fair... or giving it
6:42
Speaker 1: a real chance. I was managing the narrative. I rereading
6:46
Speaker 1: that old journal on the plane, I found a page
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Speaker 1: from the therapy years. My therapist had asked me, who
6:50
Speaker 1: are you in this story when no one else is watching?
6:53
Speaker 1: I had written the question down and then written three
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Speaker 1: full pages about what my best friend thought, what my
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Speaker 1: mom thought, what my sister thought, what the group chat's
7:01
Speaker 1: general consensus was. I had not answered the question at all.
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Speaker 1: Not one word about me. I had accidentally turned my
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Speaker 1: love life into a podcast and I wasn't even the host.
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Speaker 1: Coming up next, the moment on that trip when everything
7:14
Speaker 1: cracked open and what the person closest to me said
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Speaker 1: that I was not ready to hear. The second evening
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Speaker 1: of the conference. That's where it cracked open, right? The
7:24
Speaker 1: sessions were fine. I barely remember a single one. What
7:27
Speaker 1: I remember is deciding, almost on a whim, to go
7:30
Speaker 1: to dinner alone, which for me is not a natural thing.
7:33
Speaker 1: I was raised in a house where silence at a
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Speaker 1: table meant something was wrong. My dad was kind, he
7:37
Speaker 1: was really kind, but his inner life was this quiet
7:40
Speaker 1: locked room and I spent my whole childhood trying to
7:42
Speaker 1: read the door. So I learned to fill space, to talk,
7:45
Speaker 1: to report. Going to dinner alone and just sitting there
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Speaker 1: with no one to fill silence for felt genuinely uncomfortable,
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Speaker 1: like showing up to a test I hadn't studied for.
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Speaker 1: But I went, I ordered something I couldn't even pronounce,
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Speaker 1: which is bold for someone who normally plays it safe
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Speaker 1: when no one she knows is watching. And I sat there.
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Speaker 1: And then this feeling arrived. I can only describe it
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Speaker 1: as caught. Like someone had walked in and seen something
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Speaker 1: I hadn't meant to show. Except no one had walked in.
8:09
Speaker 1: There was no one there. It was just me and
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Speaker 1: my own romantic life. And I realized I had no
8:14
Speaker 1: idea what I thought about any of it. Not one clear, unmediated,
8:17
Speaker 1: actually mine opinion. Can we see this? I had been
8:21
Speaker 1: with my partner for almost two years at that point,
8:24
Speaker 1: living together for several months. And I sat there in
8:26
Speaker 1: that restaurant and I could not name a single feeling
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Speaker 1: about our relationship that I had held privately for more
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Speaker 1: than a few hours before narrating it to someone else.
8:34
Speaker 1: The sticky note my partner left on the coffee maker
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Speaker 1: one morning, the one that made me feel so safe
8:38
Speaker 1: I teared up a little, I had photographed it and
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Speaker 1: sent it to my best friend before I had even
8:41
Speaker 1: sat with the feeling, before I had even made my coffee.
8:44
Speaker 1: I had let her react to it before I had
8:46
Speaker 1: finished having the feeling myself. The small argument where I
8:49
Speaker 1: said something I regretted, I had called my sister before
8:51
Speaker 1: I had apologized to my partner. My sister, who is
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Speaker 1: wonderful and says exactly what she thinks and has opinions
8:56
Speaker 1: about everything before the sentence is finished, She had given
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Speaker 1: me her full verdict on my partner's behavior before I
9:01
Speaker 1: had even figured out what I actually felt. And I
9:03
Speaker 1: had let her verdict sit in the room with me
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Speaker 1: and my partner for weeks after. That dinner alone was
9:07
Speaker 1: the first time I felt the full weight of how
9:09
Speaker 1: many other people were living inside my relationship with me.
9:11
Speaker 1: I had never protected it. Not once. Yeah, not once.
9:17
Speaker 1: There was a woman at the table next to me.
9:18
Speaker 1: She was on the phone describing a fight with her
9:20
Speaker 1: partner in real time. Like word for word, he said
9:22
Speaker 1: this and then I said that. And then he did
9:24
Speaker 1: the thing with the face. And I watched her and
9:26
Speaker 1: I thought, that is me. I do that exact thing.
9:29
Speaker 1: Not the fight specifically, but the immediate translation of a
9:32
Speaker 1: private moment into a report for someone else. I pulled
9:35
Speaker 1: out the journal, the one I'd bought specifically because it
9:37
Speaker 1: was a different color from my one at home. I
9:39
Speaker 1: don't know why that mattered, but it did, and I
9:41
Speaker 1: wrote the question my therapist had asked me years earlier.
9:44
Speaker 1: Who are you in this story when no one else
9:46
Speaker 1: is watching? And this time I answered it. I wrote
9:48
Speaker 1: for a full hour. About my partner. About what I
9:51
Speaker 1: actually felt, in my own words, with no one else's
9:54
Speaker 1: voice mixed in. No one knew what I was writing.
9:57
Speaker 1: I didn't tell anyone I was having a realization. It
9:59
Speaker 1: was the first genuinely private thing I had done in
10:01
Speaker 1: a decade. The food had some kind of foam on top,
10:04
Speaker 1: and I have no idea what the foam was or
10:06
Speaker 1: why it was there, but I ate the whole thing
10:08
Speaker 1: and I felt completely free. Which tells you how hungry
10:10
Speaker 1: I was for exactly this. Make sense? Okay, so here's
10:14
Speaker 1: what I had been telling myself for years to explain
10:17
Speaker 1: all of it. I told myself sharing was healthy. I
10:19
Speaker 1: had done three years of weekly therapy. I had the
10:21
Speaker 1: books on the shelf. I knew the value of vulnerability.
10:24
Speaker 1: I could talk about it intelligently. I had genuinely done work.
10:27
Speaker 1: I told myself my mom needed to know things because
10:29
Speaker 1: she worried and keeping her in the dark felt unkind.
10:31
Speaker 1: I told myself my best friend was my person and
10:33
Speaker 1: that keeping things from her felt dishonest, like a small
10:36
Speaker 1: daily lie. I told myself I was just wired for
10:38
Speaker 1: verbal processing, that this was my learning style practically for
10:41
Speaker 1: my feelings. All of that was true. Every word. And also,
10:45
Speaker 1: all of it was a way of avoiding the one
10:47
Speaker 1: thing that scared me most, which was sitting alone with
10:49
Speaker 1: not knowing. Because not knowing is genuinely uncomfortable. And if
10:52
Speaker 1: someone else has an opinion, even a borrowed one, even
10:55
Speaker 1: one that doesn't quite fit, I can use it to move.
10:58
Speaker 1: I can stop floating. I didn't realize that's what I
11:01
Speaker 1: was doing. I thought I was being open. I was
11:03
Speaker 1: being scared. Those aren't the same thing, right? I called
11:08
Speaker 1: my partner from the hotel room later that night, not
11:10
Speaker 1: to debrief the conference, not to have a big conversation,
11:13
Speaker 1: just to talk. My partner asked how dinner was, and
11:15
Speaker 1: I said I had a realization, and my partner said quietly,
11:18
Speaker 1: the way they say things when they already know more
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Speaker 1: than they're letting on, you know you don't have to
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Speaker 1: tell me right now. And I almost argued. My mouth opened.
11:25
Speaker 1: I was going to say, no, no, I want to,
11:26
Speaker 1: because that is what I always do. I volunteer the
11:28
Speaker 1: information before anyone has asked. It's almost a reflex. But
11:31
Speaker 1: something stopped me. I said, okay. And we talked about
11:34
Speaker 1: the dog, who had apparently spent the day napping on
11:36
Speaker 1: the stack of forms we hadn't finished, which, she's a
11:38
Speaker 1: rescue with opinions. What can you do? We talked about
11:41
Speaker 1: the plants. We hung up. And I sat there in
11:43
Speaker 1: the hotel room with the realization still entirely mine. No
11:46
Speaker 1: one else's voice in it yet. It was uncomfortable. And
11:48
Speaker 1: also underneath that, something else, something quieter, like relief. My
11:53
Speaker 1: sister called the next day to check in because she
11:54
Speaker 1: always does. She will absolutely call you in the middle
11:56
Speaker 1: of your emotional breakthrough to ask what you're doing for dinner.
11:59
Speaker 1: She asked how the trip was. And I said, good.
12:01
Speaker 1: She said, that's it? Because she is who she is.
12:03
Speaker 1: And she was ready for content. And I said, yes,
12:05
Speaker 1: that's it. She was quiet for a second, which for
12:07
Speaker 1: my sister is extraordinary. And then she said, good for you, honestly.
12:10
Speaker 1: And I understood something then. It's not privacy, it's protection,
12:14
Speaker 1: and you get to decide who holds your story. My
12:16
Speaker 1: sister being slightly put out that I didn't have a
12:17
Speaker 1: crisis for her to weigh in on was honestly also fair.
12:20
Speaker 1: She's good at it. She just doesn't always get to
12:22
Speaker 1: practice it on me anymore. I made a decision on
12:26
Speaker 1: the flight home, and I want to be careful about
12:27
Speaker 1: how I describe it because it wasn't a rule, it
12:29
Speaker 1: wasn't a policy, it wasn't a system I built and
12:32
Speaker 1: laminated and put on the fridge. It was more like
12:34
Speaker 1: a new default setting. I decided to feel something first
12:36
Speaker 1: before I filed a report on it. 24 hours, sometimes 48.
12:40
Speaker 1: Just enough time to know what I thought before I
12:42
Speaker 1: knew what everyone else thought. I also decided there were
12:45
Speaker 1: things about my relationship that were going to stay in
12:46
Speaker 1: the apartment. Not secrets. Not things I was ashamed of
12:50
Speaker 1: or hiding for bad reasons. Just ours. The note on
12:52
Speaker 1: the coffee maker. The way my partner laughs at a
12:55
Speaker 1: movie right before falling asleep 10 minutes in. Every single time.
12:58
Speaker 1: Same laugh. Same 10 minutes. The small repairs after small arguments.
13:02
Speaker 1: The way you find your way back to each other
13:04
Speaker 1: in the ordinary texture of a Tuesday. Those things were
13:06
Speaker 1: not for the group chat. I had been so used
13:09
Speaker 1: to translating my life into something shareable that I had
13:11
Speaker 1: forgotten some things are just for you. They don't need
13:14
Speaker 1: an audience to be real. The decision wasn't to go silent.
13:17
Speaker 1: It was to choose deliberately who gets to hold which part, right?
13:20
Speaker 1: That's the whole thing. The flight home was a window seat.
13:24
Speaker 1: Journal closed for once. I just watched the city come
13:27
Speaker 1: into view and I didn't text anyone that I was landing.
13:29
Speaker 1: I just landed. The dog was at the door when
13:31
Speaker 1: I got home doing her full body greeting, a sock
13:33
Speaker 1: already in her mouth like a welcome gift. I don't
13:35
Speaker 1: know where she finds them. We have checked every corner
13:38
Speaker 1: of that apartment. My partner had kept every plant alive,
13:41
Speaker 1: including the one on the far left of the balcony
13:42
Speaker 1: that I had genuinely given up on. The one I
13:45
Speaker 1: had privately eulogized, told my best friend was too far gone,
13:48
Speaker 1: moved past the denial stage on. It had a new leaf,
13:51
Speaker 1: a whole new leaf. And I stood there looking at
13:53
Speaker 1: it and I didn't send a picture to anyone for
13:55
Speaker 1: three days. When I finally did tell my best friend
13:57
Speaker 1: about the plant and what it meant to me, I
13:59
Speaker 1: already knew exactly what I felt. It came out whole.
14:01
Speaker 1: That was new. You know? The ego part of this
14:05
Speaker 1: was quieter than I expected and also more embarrassing. I
14:08
Speaker 1: had built a real identity around being the woman who
14:10
Speaker 1: processed out loud. Open. Communicative. Did the therapy. Read the books.
14:16
Speaker 1: Could talk about feelings clearly and at length, which not
14:18
Speaker 1: everyone can do that. I was a little proud of it, honestly.
14:21
Speaker 1: Letting that go even a little, even just softening the default,
14:24
Speaker 1: felt like losing something I'd earned. Like turning in a
14:26
Speaker 1: badge I'd worked hard to get. My best friend noticed
14:29
Speaker 1: within two weeks. She didn't say anything at first. She
14:31
Speaker 1: just noticed. And she's sharp. She notices things the way
14:33
Speaker 1: a cat notices something has moved two inches. Then she said,
14:37
Speaker 1: you seem different, like you're keeping something. And I said
14:39
Speaker 1: I wasn't keeping anything. I was just keeping some things.
14:43
Speaker 1: She got it immediately. She's the one who'd gone quiet
14:46
Speaker 1: on purpose years earlier, the week she stopped answering my
14:48
Speaker 1: texts about a man, specifically to give me back to myself.
14:51
Speaker 1: I had been furious at the time, genuinely furious. I
14:54
Speaker 1: think I said something dramatic, like I can't believe you're
14:56
Speaker 1: doing this to me right now. She had known before
14:58
Speaker 1: I did what I needed. She understood what I was
15:00
Speaker 1: doing now before I fully explained it. I had to
15:02
Speaker 1: sit with my own feelings like an actual adult. I
15:05
Speaker 1: will not pretend it wasn't annoying. It was a little annoying, okay?
15:09
Speaker 1: Coming up, what this pattern actually shows about why we
15:12
Speaker 1: share the way we do, and the question I want
15:13
Speaker 1: you to sit with before this episode is over. Okay,
15:17
Speaker 1: so here's the thing about the open bookkeeper, and I'm
15:19
Speaker 1: going to say it plainly because I think it's a
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Speaker 1: part nobody talks about, right? She's not sharing because she's brave.
15:25
Speaker 1: She's sharing because her own perception doesn't feel like enough yet.
15:28
Speaker 1: That's the root of it. That's where it starts. For me,
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Speaker 1: it started with my dad, kind man, genuinely kind, worked
15:34
Speaker 1: long hours, came home and was present in the room,
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Speaker 1: but not easy to get into. Because inner life was
15:39
Speaker 1: private in a way that felt like distance when I
15:41
Speaker 1: was little, even if that wasn't what he meant. So
15:43
Speaker 1: I went the other direction, all the way to the
15:45
Speaker 1: other end. If I told everyone everything, then no one
15:47
Speaker 1: could ever say they didn't know me, right? That felt
15:50
Speaker 1: like safety. That felt like closeness. What it actually was,
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Speaker 1: was noise. My inner voice, the one I finally started
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Speaker 1: hearing on that trip, goes something like this. If I
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Speaker 1: don't say it out loud, it isn't real. And if
16:01
Speaker 1: it isn't real, it might disappear. Yeah, that's the belief
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Speaker 1: underneath all the voice memos and the Sunday calls and
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Speaker 1: the group chat updates. It's not about the relationship. It's
16:10
Speaker 1: never really about the relationship. It's about whether you trust
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Speaker 1: your own experience to exist without a witness. And if
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Speaker 1: you've spent years feeling like your feelings needed to be
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Speaker 1: confirmed by someone else before they counted, that's not a
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Speaker 1: character flaw. That's a learned response. Make sense? Here's the thing, though,
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Speaker 1: and this is where it gets a little uncomfortable. There's
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Speaker 1: a self-concept piece in here that I really want you
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Speaker 1: to hear. Self-concept is the story you tell about who
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Speaker 1: you are, the version of yourself you've built and named
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Speaker 1: and show up as. When being open, being the one
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Speaker 1: who talks about her feelings, being the woman who's done
16:40
Speaker 1: the work, when that becomes your identity, keeping something private
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Speaker 1: starts to feel like a flaw. Like you're hiding, like
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Speaker 1: you're being secretive or closed off or undoing all the therapy.
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Speaker 1: So you share and you call it health. And I'm
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Speaker 1: not saying it's never health. Sometimes it is, but sometimes
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Speaker 1: it's your scared part, handing your tender new thing to
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Speaker 1: other people to hold. because holding it yourself feels like
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Speaker 1: too much responsibility. Sound familiar? Yeah, I thought so. My
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Speaker 1: identity as a feelings processor was so strong, I had
17:06
Speaker 1: basically built a brand around it. The brand was lovable chaos,
17:10
Speaker 1: but it was my chaos, and I was proud of it.
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Speaker 1: I will admit that out loud with no shame. I
17:14
Speaker 1: thought it made me interesting. It also made my love
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Speaker 1: life a group project that I never got to author alone,
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Speaker 1: which is a thing I didn't notice until I was 30,000
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Speaker 1: feet in the air eating foam. Right? And here's what
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Speaker 1: I want to say clearly. What I understood sitting in
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Speaker 1: that hotel room and then again on the flight home
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Speaker 1: and then again standing at my front door watching my
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Speaker 1: dog steal the sock off my partner's foot the second
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Speaker 1: we walked in. It's not privacy, it's protection. And you
17:36
Speaker 1: get to decide who holds your story. What I do
17:39
Speaker 1: now is not silence. I want to be really clear
17:41
Speaker 1: about that because I know someone out there is going
17:42
Speaker 1: to hear this and go, okay, so I just stopped
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Speaker 1: talking to everyone about everything and that is not what
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Speaker 1: I'm saying. I still call my mom on Sundays. She
17:49
Speaker 1: still gets the general shape of my life. She would
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Speaker 1: genuinely not survive otherwise and neither would I. My best
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Speaker 1: friend still hears things, real things, the good and the hard.
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Speaker 1: My sister still says exactly what she thinks, and I
17:59
Speaker 1: still sometimes walk into that on purpose because she's usually
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Speaker 1: right even when I don't want her to be. The
18:03
Speaker 1: difference is sequence, right? I feel it first. I write
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Speaker 1: one sentence in the journal just for me before anything
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Speaker 1: goes anywhere else. I ask myself honestly, am I sharing
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Speaker 1: this to connect with someone I love, or am I
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Speaker 1: sharing it to outsource a decision I'm afraid to make myself?
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Speaker 1: If the answer is outsource, I wait. 24 hours. Sometimes 48.
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Speaker 1: Just long enough to know what I think before I
18:22
Speaker 1: know what anyone else thinks. I also have a small
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Speaker 1: category now of things that live only in the apartment.
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Speaker 1: Not because they're shameful, not because I'm hiding, but because
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Speaker 1: they're sacred. The note my partner leaves on the coffee
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Speaker 1: maker on the mornings I have an early call. The
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Speaker 1: way my partner laughs at the movie right before falling
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Speaker 1: asleep 10 minutes in. The small repairs after small disagreements.
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Speaker 1: The moment I looked at the plant on the far
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Speaker 1: left of the balcony and saw a new leaf and
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Speaker 1: just stood there quietly feeling something I can only describe
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Speaker 1: as hope. Those things don't need an audience. They're allowed
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Speaker 1: to be real without being reported. That was the dare
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Speaker 1: I gave myself. Dare might actually be the right word
18:53
Speaker 1: because at first it genuinely felt like one. Try it.
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Speaker 1: Before you text about something new, write one sentence about
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Speaker 1: what you actually feel. Just for you. Just to see
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Speaker 1: what's there before anyone else's voice gets in. My journal
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Speaker 1: is now the most chaotic and most private document in existence,
19:08
Speaker 1: by the way. It reads like classified government files about
19:11
Speaker 1: a woman who has very strong feelings about plants and
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Speaker 1: sticky notes and what it means to be loved quietly.
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Speaker 1: I recommend it. Okay? So I want to ask you
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Speaker 1: something and I really want you to actually sit with it,
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Speaker 1: not scroll past it, not screenshot it, to send to
19:24
Speaker 1: your best friend. Just sit with it, right? Think about
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Speaker 1: the last relationship that mattered to you or the almost
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Speaker 1: relationship or the situation, you know, the one how long
19:33
Speaker 1: before you told someone. Who did you tell first? Was
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Speaker 1: it because you wanted to share joy with someone you
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Speaker 1: love or was it because you needed someone else to
19:39
Speaker 1: confirm that the joy was allowed? And this one, this
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Speaker 1: is the one I want you to really land on.
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Speaker 1: When it ended or changed, how much of your grief
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Speaker 1: was about the person? And how much of it was
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Speaker 1: about having to retire the story you've been telling everyone else?
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Speaker 1: How much of the loss was the relationship and how
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Speaker 1: much was the narrative? You don't have to answer out loud.
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Speaker 1: That is actually the whole point. You can answer in
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Speaker 1: a journal you hide from yourself like a classified file.
20:00
Speaker 1: I genuinely recommend it. It's a spiritual practice. And I
20:04
Speaker 1: want to be honest about something before we close, because
20:06
Speaker 1: I think honesty here matters more than a tidy ending.
20:09
Speaker 1: I'm not cured of this, right? I still have moments.
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Speaker 1: Something happens and my hand is on my phone before
20:14
Speaker 1: my brain has even caught up with the feeling. The
20:16
Speaker 1: dog does something ridiculous. Like this morning, she carried an
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Speaker 1: entire throw pillow to the door to greet my partner.
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Speaker 1: The whole pillow in her mouth, like a gift, like
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Speaker 1: she had manners. And I wanted to send that to
20:26
Speaker 1: everyone I know. That one I allow. Dog content is
20:29
Speaker 1: a public good and she's basically a public figure at
20:31
Speaker 1: this point. But with love, with the tender, uncertain new things,
20:34
Speaker 1: I'm slower now. And I want to name this honestly
20:37
Speaker 1: because I think it matters. Slower sometimes feels like lonely.
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Speaker 1: It does. Keeping something private when you're used to broadcasting
20:43
Speaker 1: it feels strange at first, like you're doing something wrong,
20:46
Speaker 1: like you're being secretive or withholding or closing off. It
20:48
Speaker 1: doesn't mean you're doing it wrong. It means you're learning
20:50
Speaker 1: to hold something yourself. And if you notice that you
20:53
Speaker 1: can't sit alone with any feeling at all, that there's
20:55
Speaker 1: a compulsive quality to the sharing, that you feel genuinely
20:57
Speaker 1: anxious if you go a day without telling someone what's
20:59
Speaker 1: happening in your heart, a therapist can help you trace
21:02
Speaker 1: where that started. That's worth knowing. You deserve that kind
21:05
Speaker 1: of support. Here's where I want to leave you. You
21:08
Speaker 1: get to decide who holds your story. Not your mom,
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Speaker 1: even though she loves you. Not the group chat, even
21:13
Speaker 1: though they're rooting for you. Not your best friend who
21:15
Speaker 1: is wonderful and has been there for every chapter, even her.
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Speaker 1: You first. It's not privacy, it's protection, and you get
21:21
Speaker 1: to decide who holds your story. Keep the tender things
21:23
Speaker 1: tender a little longer. Let something be yours before it
21:26
Speaker 1: belongs to everyone. And maybe text me about it. Except
21:29
Speaker 1: actually don't. Sit with it first. Right? You know what
21:31
Speaker 1: I mean. If this episode hits somewhere real for you,
21:35
Speaker 1: send it to the friend who tells everyone. Everything the
21:37
Speaker 1: second it happens, the one you love, the one who
21:40
Speaker 1: might need to hear that she gets to keep some things.
21:42
Speaker 1: You know who she is. I'll talk to you soon.
21:45
Speaker 1: Take care of yourself. This show is made by Oboe Media.