i leave when i don’t feel wanted

i don’t like being around if no one is listening

Vincent Giarrano

There is a gentle kind of leaving that does not slam doors or shout final goodbyes. It is a slipping away, an excusing of oneself, a gentle folding of presence into absence. I have perfected it. I have turned it into something almost graceful, something that looks, from the outside, like mere natural drift. But underneath, it is built on old instincts: the sharpened sense of someone who has spent too long learning when they are no longer welcome. I leave when I don’t feel wanted. I leave when the room shifts imperceptibly, and the warmth drains out of conversations. I leave when I catch the sideways glance, the distracted nods, the way voices move around like water around a rock that isn’t meant to be there. And I don’t make a scene. I just know. I just go.

I have learned to listen not just to words but to the spaces between them, the silences that stretch a little too long, the laughter that no longer looks for my eyes to share in it. I notice. I always notice. I am observant to a fault, and sometimes I think my heart wears the eyes of a hawk—always searching for signs, always alert to the smallest slights, even the unintentional ones. It is not pride, not really. It is survival. Because nothing cuts deeper than being tolerated. Nothing is lonelier than being the person still talking after everyone else has stopped listening. Once I feel I’ve become the leftovers on a plate—something once enjoyed but now forgotten, pushed aside as the next thing comes along—I excuse myself. Always politely, always calmly. I don’t want to become a burden. I don’t want to force my presence where it is no longer wanted. I tell myself it’s an act of dignity. But if I am honest, it’s also a defence mechanism, a shield to protect the tender, fearful parts of me that still believe love is precarious.

Maybe that’s why I clung tightly—sometimes too tightly—to the few people I already know, the ones who have been familiar enough to quiet, if only slightly, the fear that they, too, will one day turn away. They know me, at least partially. They have seen the parts of me that are raw and unhidden. I tell myself they are safer. I tell myself loyalty is a virtue, but sometimes I wonder if it is simply fear dressed in better clothes. How do you step out into new relationships when a part of you is already rehearsing the ways it could all fall apart? How do you meet new people when every smile, and tentative beginning, carries the weight of this gnawing question: Will you stay or will you leave me to the wolves? The wolves are the memories of every time I was abandoned, every time affection cooled, every time I became invisible in a crowd I once called home. The wolves are loneliness, rejection, and betrayal. They are the biting winds of nights spent wondering what I did wrong, if I was too much or not enough.

So I stick to the familiar. I nestle into the safe harbours I have already found, even when those harbours grow cramped and stormy. Because better the storms I know than the unknown beasts lurking in new terrain. And yet, there is a part of me that aches for more. A part of me that still dreams of laughter that reaches out and draws me in, of conversations that don’t need me to strain to be heard. A part of me that wishes, deeply, that I could walk into a new room without the old ghosts trailing at my heels. A part of me still whispers: maybe not everyone will leave. But that part is still learning to trust itself. It is still battling the ingrained instincts of excusing myself because anyone else has a chance to. It is still trying to believe that I don’t have to monitor every interaction like a cautious sentry scanning the horizon for danger.

Before the pain even has a chance to root itself in me, I start pulling away. I distance myself immediately, sometimes so quickly that even I don’t realise I’ve already begun building the walls. It’s a reflex now, automatic and cold, but it feels safer than waiting around to be proven right about being unwanted. I start eyeing the block button once I feel even the faintest flicker of dismissal or disinterest. It is ridiculous how fast my mind goes there, preparing for a goodbye before a proper conversation has even started. It is a brutal instinct—to squish an ant with a bomb—but it feels necessary. It feels like cutting off the infection before it can spread, like sparing myself the slow and humiliating unravelling that heartache always brings. I would rather scorch the entire ground than risk a seed of hurt being planted. Better to be the one who leaves first than the one who is left standing alone, wondering where it all went wrong.

The truth is, there’s a deep loneliness in living this way. It is a suffocating loneliness that masquerades as self-sufficiency, as independence. It says, I don’t need anyone, even as my heart aches. Maybe it is time to question the story I have written about myself. Maybe it is not always true that I am unwanted. Maybe not every distracted glance or tone in voice is rejection. Maybe sometimes people are simply tired, or busy, or caught up in their own fears, just like me. Maybe not everyone is a wolf. Maybe some people are looking for me just as much as I am looking for them. I don’t know how to turn off the hyper-vigilance, the reflexive retreat. But I want to learn. I want to stay even when I feel the first tremors of discomfort. I want to risk being vulnerable enough to say, Hey, can you see me? I’m still here. I do not want to be a ghost in my own life.

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“With her own hand she'd painted herself into a corner, and then out of the picture altogether.” — Jhumpa Lahiri