intchesting

 i stopped going to therapy.

a while ago, i realized i started to dread the idea of doing things. making appointments. meeting my friends. going to work! localizing my future prospects. emotionally regulating. exercising. if the dopamine wasn't easily and instantaneously extractable, it was far less likely that i'd engage in the activity. my therapist would ask me how i'd been, and i'd tell that i was doing really well! my internship was difficult, and i felt like i was making a fool of myself at any given moment in the office, but i just had to give it a chance. my relationship was having an upswing, and the harvest of emotional labor i carried was just part of the journey of loving someone. my friends and i were perpetually connected, and my inability to leave my apartment was just due to the inconvenience of the orange line and insurmountability of the distance. i remember how stretched out my lips would feel when i'd speak to her. i didn't not mean anything i was saying; i really did feel happy. there would be stilted and stiffened pauses in between my recounts and moments where i wanted nothing more than for the session to come to an end.

it was my first time breaking up with someone. i handled it poorly. i asked for three weeks of space. and then a month. and then another. and then i said goodbye. the same strategy that i swore was definitively disrespectful seemed so easy to me in that moment.

i don't even want to be writing this post right now. my phone is resting flush against my chest. staring soullessly at my computer screen is excruciating, but i'd be admitting defeat if i start scrolling again. i remember the ache i used to feel when i had something to write, something to purge. i'm so afraid of everything coming out. i can't stand it. i can't allow myself to feel calm over the idea that my body is capable of ejecting, and releasing, and spewing out something so foul-tasting and odorous and viscous. i don't want to know what is inside of me. i don't want to watch it reveal itself. i don't want to taste it. 

i can't help but wonder if my emetophobia and failure to write are connected.