Becoming Untrappable

Lucy was still a person then.

I mean really a person.

No wings. No halo. No celestial bullshit. No disappearing into the clouds over LAX while the rest of us stood there wondering where in the fuck she went.

She had a flight-attendant uniform hanging over the back of a hotel chair.

Shoes somewhere on the floor.

A roller bag cracked open because apparently unpacking completely for one night is something only psychologically stable people do.

Her phone was charging beside the bed.

Probably badly.

Probably at 12%.

And she was tired.

That part I remember.

Not dramatic tired. Not the kind where you announce it and everyone feels sorry for you.

It was that deeper tired where your body has stopped asking permission. Your feet hurt. Your jaw hurts. Your brain has somehow decided that after working an airplane all day, now would be an excellent time to revisit every unresolved relationship you've had since childhood.

Flight attendant glamour.

It's mostly compression socks and emotional archaeology.

And Lucy was very good at archaeology.

Give her one weird text message and that bitch could uncover an entire lost civilization.

A period instead of an exclamation point?

Interesting.

Three hours between responses?

Let's discuss.

A change in tone?

Call the Smithsonian.

She could read people. She could feel rooms change. She could tell when someone was pulling away before they probably knew they were pulling away.

For a long time I thought that was intuition.

Some of it probably was.

Some of it was fear wearing very expensive sunglasses.

Because underneath all that observation was one question I kept asking without realizing I was asking it:

Am I still safe here?

Safe in the relationship.

Safe in the friendship.

Safe in the room.

Safe in somebody's affection.

Safe in whatever future I had already started building in my head.

And when the answer felt uncertain, Lucy went to work.

That is what she did.

She worked.

She explained.

She made herself useful.

She became funny.

She became understanding.

She gave people the benefit of the doubt until the benefit of the doubt had its own fucking pension plan.

If someone was hurting, she wanted to help.

If someone was confused, she wanted to clarify.

If someone pulled away, she tried to understand why.

And if understanding why required seventeen screenshots, a timeline, two conversations with friends and enough psychological analysis to qualify for college credit, well...

We were thorough.

That was the old deal.

If I can understand everything, maybe nothing can surprise me.

If I can help enough, maybe nobody leaves.

If I can become important enough, maybe I cannot be abandoned.

I don't think I ever said those words.

The body doesn't need complete sentences.

It just learns.

---

What I did not understand at the time was that I had built a life around earning security.

Not intentionally.

Nobody wakes up and says, Today I think I'll develop an elaborate emotional system where my worth becomes connected to how necessary I can make myself.

It happens quietly.

You become the helper.

The entertainer.

The fixer.

The good friend.

The person people call.

The person who understands.

The person who forgives.

The person who can see seventeen sides of somebody else's situation while occasionally losing track of his own.

And those qualities are not bad.

That is what made this so hard to see.

Because some of the things that hurt me the most grew directly beside some of the things I like most about myself.

I am generous.

I care deeply.

I want to understand people.

I love making someone feel seen.

I don't want to lose that.

But there was another thing mixed into it.

A bargain.

I will work very hard for the security that somebody should be giving me freely.

When I finally saw that sentence, something in me went quiet.

Because there was the trap.

It wasn't caring.

It wasn't love.

It wasn't being generous.

It was how quickly I would leave myself when any of those things felt threatened.

---

Lucy used to think traps looked like danger.

I don't anymore.

Sometimes the trap looks fucking wonderful.

It looks like somebody saying they miss you.

It looks like chemistry.

It looks like a trip.

It looks like money.

It looks like sex.

It looks like somebody suddenly becoming available after being unavailable long enough that their attention now feels like winning something.

It looks like a beautiful promise landing at the exact moment the lonely part of you is tired enough to believe anything.

And sometimes there isn't even another person involved.

“Nothing outside of me gets automatic access to my behavior anymore.”

Sometimes the trap is relief.

The thought that I could make this feeling stop right now.

Fix it.

Use something.

Call someone.

Spend something.

Explain something.

Just do something so I do not have to sit in the uncertainty for another five fucking minutes.

Urgency has always had a very convincing voice.

That is probably why I mistook it for truth so many times.

---

I think about airplanes differently now.

Maybe because I have spent so much of my adult life on them that everything eventually turns into an aviation metaphor whether anybody asked for one or not.

Turbulence is a perfect example.

An airplane starts shaking and every primitive part of the human nervous system goes:

THIS IS WRONG.

But turbulence does not automatically mean the airplane is in danger.

It means the air is moving.

That's it.

You secure the cabin.

You sit down.

You stop pouring coffee.

You let the airplane move through what it is already designed to move through.

I apparently needed several decades to apply this concept to my own emotional life.

Because when emotional turbulence started, I did the exact opposite.

I got up.

Someone became inconsistent?

Get up.

Someone pulled away?

Get up.

Loneliness hit?

Get up.

Craving?

Definitely get up.

Fear that I was about to lose somebody?

Forget the seatbelt sign. We are sprinting through the fucking cabin.

Then I would wonder why I kept getting hurt.

Maybe the lesson was never how to stop turbulence.

Maybe it was learning how to stay seated.

---

This is what becoming untrappable means to me now.

Not becoming harder.

Not becoming suspicious.

Not interrogating every person who walks into my life like I'm TSA PreCheck for emotional intimacy.

I don't want that life either.

Hypervigilance still makes the trap the center of your life.

You're just standing farther away from it.

I want something else.

I want to know that I can deal with reality when reality arrives.

That is different.

I don't have to know what someone secretly means.

I can ask.

Then I can watch.

I don't have to predict whether someone will disappoint me.

If they do, I can decide what happens next.

I don't have to guarantee that nobody will ever leave.

People leave.

People die.

People change.

People make choices we do not understand.

I know that more than I ever wanted to.

The safety cannot come from guaranteeing that nothing painful happens.

That deal does not exist.

The safety has to become:

If something painful happens, I will still be here.

That is new.

---

There are parts of me that are still getting used to this arrangement.

The Rescuer is still very active.

He means well.

God, he means well.

He sees somebody drowning and starts taking his shoes off before checking whether they're actually in three feet of water.

The Scanner is still here too.

She catches inconsistencies.

She notices tone.

I need her.

I just don't need her running surveillance twenty-four hours a day.

And the Performer?

She's absolutely staying.

Life would be fucking boring without her.

The one who has changed the most may be the part of me that needs to understand everything.

I love a map.

Give me enough data and I will build you an emotional PowerPoint presentation complete with supporting documentation and possibly an appendix.

But there comes a point when more evidence is not understanding.

It is postponement.

Sometimes enough information becomes a decision.

I am learning that.

Slowly.

---

This is where recovery started becoming much bigger for me than simply not using something.

Because once you start looking closely, escape has a lot of costumes.

Sometimes it's a substance.

Sometimes it's being chosen.

Sometimes it's sexual attention.

Sometimes it's money.

Sometimes it's rescuing somebody.

Sometimes it's returning to a relationship because the loneliness hurts more tonight than the relationship hurt yesterday.

Sometimes it's the fantasy that one perfectly worded message will finally make somebody understand what seventeen earlier messages apparently could not accomplish.

And that one...

That one I know.

There is always this moment before I do the old thing.

I didn't used to notice it.

Now I do.

It's almost physical.

The door opens.

There is relief on the other side.

Or hope.

Or attention.

Or some version of a future I desperately want.

And the old Lucy starts moving toward it.

That is the moment.

Not after.

Not tomorrow when I'm trying to understand why I did it again.

Right there.

The doorway.

And now I try to ask myself one question:

If I walk through this, how will I feel about myself tomorrow?

Not will they be happy.

Not will they stay.

Not will I get what I want.

Me.

Tomorrow.

That question has absolutely destroyed the resale value of several terrible decisions.

---

I used to believe becoming stronger meant the vulnerable parts of me would eventually disappear.

They haven't.

I still get scared.

I still get lonely.

I still want people.

I still want to be chosen.

I still want to feel important to somebody.

I still sometimes feel that old panic when something beautiful looks like it might be disappearing.

The difference is that those feelings no longer automatically get my hands.

They don't automatically get my phone.

They don't automatically get my wallet.

They don't automatically get my body.

They don't automatically get tomorrow.

They get heard.

That's different.

Nothing outside of me gets automatic access to my behavior anymore.

I had to sit with that sentence for a while.

Because it sounds simple.

It is not simple.

It may be one of the hardest things I have ever tried to learn.

---

Sometimes I think about the question that started this entire thing.

Where in the fuck is Lucy?

For years it sounded like she was missing.

Like somewhere between everything I had survived, everyone I had lost, every version of myself I had become and every desperate thing I had done trying not to feel alone, I had misplaced her.

I don't think that is what happened anymore.

I think Lucy was there every time.

The hotel rooms.

The airplanes.

The invitations.

The promises.

The loneliness.

The moments I knew better and went anyway.

The moments I didn't know better.

The moments I came home furious with somebody else when some part of that anger really belonged to the fact that I had left myself behind again.

She was there.

Waiting.

Probably barefoot.

Probably exhausted.

Probably looking at me like:

Are we done yet?

Maybe that's what this whole thing has been.

Not finding Lucy.

Returning to her.

And I can picture her now exactly the way she was before I turned her into mythology.

Hair a mess.

Uniform hanging on the chair.

Phone face down.

Airport lights blinking outside the hotel window.

Nothing cosmic happening.

Nobody coming to rescue her.

Just one person finally realizing she does not have to follow every feeling through every open door.

The air can move.

Somebody can leave.

A craving can come.

A promise can break.

I can be hurt.

I can be disappointed.

I can love somebody enormously.

And still...

I can stay.

So where in the fuck is Lucy?

For once, I know.

She's right here.

If you missed the public announcement, Captain Lucy would like you to know:

Just because a door opens doesn’t mean you have to walk through it. Not every feeling is a boarding instruction.

Sit your ass down. Let the air move. Stay with yourself.