Most of these Self Exploration posts have resulted from me questioning things in my life and processing with my therapist. This new post is no different. 

2022 was a wild year for me!! I was spending time with new people and really enjoying myself. Dayton is not that small because I never heard of any of the four guys I met last year. I had a different rapport with each of them. I did really like two of them and they were kind of similar. I think maybe I have a type, but it isn’t physical. Anyway, we were having a good time, just enjoying each other for what we decided it was going to be. I was so emotionally spent and sexually frustrated from my relationship with Dro that I just wanted a fling, I guess. But I discovered that even that is difficult when you’re dealing with people who are emotionally distant. Imagine Cleo on Set It Off throwing the tapes out the window until she found the right one…that was me with these guys lol

Anyway, I started really leaning into the question: why is it so easy to show up sexually, but not in any other ways? Sex is vulnerable. Sex is intimate. We were developing surface level emotional relationships, but getting very close physically. Not to be graphic, but we were exploring new things together, creating lists of things to try, discussing fantasies…all these things. And the communication about those things was immaculate! They were open books! But then we couldn’t say simple shit like “I had a bad day, I’ll need some time” I know part of it is not thinking you owe your sneaky link an explanation, but it’s also a way to avoid sharing your emotions. I could make sense of them deciding they don’t wanna tell me they had a bad day but the kicker is, they made it very clear that it wasn’t just me they had this issue with. Obviously there was normal conversation and in those conversations, there was a common statement made: people say I’m nonchalant. Is that not code for emotionally unavailable? I can’t articulate it, but there was always some kind of block with some of them. This caused me to look back at all of my relationships with the men in my life, specifically the romantic/sexual ones. Was this a common theme that I missed? Yall know 30 has me reflecting on every damn thing lol

I noticed that the things that I had asked of some of the men in my life, were similar to things that were being asked of me by some of my friends. It was so easy to call out their emotional unavailability, but took years to see it in myself. I would be hesitant to make plans and I wanted to stay home all the time. I avoided making commitments to things. I always say “I hate obligations”. I still say that all the time! Oftentimes, I didn’t ask questions about other people’s lives. I answered questions about my own life with very clear limitations. I stuck to what I felt was safe. I couldn’t say “it hurt my feelings when Dro didn’t show up”. I had to always present as tough. I avoided vulnerability as much as I could. I’ve written about that in the past, but it was before I knew it to be a part of my emotional detachment. It didn’t present exactly the same way it did for the men I was involved with, but it was definitely comparable.

Processing my own emotional distance with my therapist was crazy. Like I wish there was a camera in the room because it was hilarious! I was like OMG I’m a man!!!! *No, I don’t think all men are emotionally unavailable* it was just true of the ones I had been intimate with. Not just physically, but *emotionally* too. I guess it never occurred to me that being detached was something that could happen amongst close friends, if that makes sense. Like there were people I would talk to everyday and I never thought that there could be so much emotional distance. Ok that was the long way of saying I thought that could only happen in romantic/sexual relationships lol my bad yall. This opened the door for me to look even further into familial relationships and the emotional distance that existed there. 

Being emotionally unavailable is far more common than I ever thought. It doesn’t automatically make you a bad person, but it does have some bad friends…narcissism, gaslighting, manipulation…Those things don’t trail too far behind. Especially if you’re unaware that you’re emotionally unavailable and what that means.

When you break it down into it’s tiniest parts, emotional unavailability is nothing but fear. With everything you’ve learned about me from reading my blog, how can this be so surprising lol Fear has been a huge factor in my life.  

Now after coming to this realization, I had to explore how it happened and I feel like that was kind of obvious. Somewhere down the line I learned that sharing things on certain levels was not a safe thing to do so I didn’t do it. 

I have made steps in moving out of my comfort zone and having conversations that make it possible to open myself back up again. I feel like I’m getting closer to being the version of myself that I am when I’m alone. It’s still a slow process, but we’re moving in the right direction!

I have felt such a freedom in this journey of sharing more of myself openly and allowing myself to receive support when I need it. You don’t realize how much it holds you back from getting the things you need from others. It is a gamble. You gotta make an investment in order to receive a payout. 

I believe that the emotional unavailability that some men exhibit has a long history attached to it. I still hear people tell their little boys to stop crying. That’s not something we’re going to be able to just snap our fingers and fix. But hopefully we can get more people to acknowledge this as a thing and help to find the proper support for them. 

Thanks for reading! 

PS this post has so many branches, but it was already long enough!

I think it’s time for me to own the fact that these are always going to take forever to write and post lol 

I have been going through some things. Especially with men. Girly is not pleased. If I’m being honest, some of yall suck to me right now. If it ain’t you, it’s ya homeboy. I’m just not pleased. 

Anywho, taking this deep dive into myself has been such a fun experience! The first two parts were extremely vulnerable, but it felt good to own those parts of me and my life. 

This time, I want to talk about the way I talk about myself. Noticing how I talk about myself has really made me see how common of an issue this is. I am definitely one of those people who believes that, to my core, I am who I’m always going to be. This isn’t to say that I’m averse to growing and changing, because if you’ve been on this journey with me, you know that’s not true. There are parts of me that I’m very pleased with and don’t want to change. The issue with some of those parts, is that although I like them about me, I must believe that others perceive them as negative because that’s how I present them. The other part of this is that I hide behind my words. I’ll start with the first issue…

I used to say things like:

I’m difficult
I’m too much
I always got something to say
I’m boring and
I’m a hot mess* more on this one later

I used to say these things because I believed them. I believed that I was too much for people. I believed that I was a hot mess. As I’ve grown up a bit, I began to break these things down and figure out what those things mean to me. What does it mean to be difficult? What about me is difficult? Is it that I don’t do what I’m told? Is it that I have strong opinions? Is it that I’m not impressed by the bare minimum? Because you know what? I’m ok with that. What makes me boring? I enjoy the things that I like and just because they are perceived as boring by others shouldn’t be my concern. How am I too much? Is it because I have mental health disorders and chronic illnesses? Is it because I’m a teacher and sometimes that means I don’t have the energy for others? Because honestly, accepting those things and what they require is a part of being in my life. It’s not being too much, it’s being Ashley. Even after I became comfortable owning who I am, I believe that I said these negative things to make being this way more palatable for others. If I perceive it as a negative thing, then they don’t have to feel bad for disliking this about me. 

The other part of this is the words I hide behind. For the longest time, I used to tell my friends “yall know I’m a hot mess”. Honestly, I would say that just as an excuse to be one. So anytime anything in my life went embarrassingly wrong, my friends already know “I’m a hot mess” so it’s fine. It was easier to be a hot mess than to figure out why that was true. I grew out of that. I got to the point where I didn’t want to be that anymore. I had to start looking at what things in my life fit into the “hot mess” persona and actually do the work to improve those things. The other part of this was realizing that everybody goes through things. During this phase of my life where I was trying to stop being a hot mess, I wasn’t very open about the things I was going through. Handling things in isolation made me think I was the only one with these problems and if I’m a hot mess for those things, then so is everyone else lol

I gave these negative words power. I’ve been in love with who I am for a while, but I still perceived the stronger parts of who I am as negative. My brain doesn’t like when people say words have power, but my brain also knows that they do. If I’m going around telling everyone I’m difficult, I’m too much, and I’m a hot mess, why would they believe anything different? And why would my life reflect anything different? 

I still struggle sometimes and I find myself making corrections to how I phrase things to avoid adding negative words to things I don’t actually feel negatively about. I’m perfectly fine being who I am. I love that I always have something to say and people know it. I love knowing that I’m never going to be too much for people and things that are for me. There’s a safety and security in that knowledge. 

I am who I am, I require what I require, and there’s nothing wrong with any of that. 

Thanks for reading! 

Here is the next installment of my Self Exploration series. If you haven’t read the first installment, you can click here to do so!

Anybody who follows me on social media is aware of my issues with mental health. I don’t make it a secret because a large part of my healing came from community. People sharing their stories and letting me know that I’m not alone in this was absolutely essential for learning what having mental health issues meant and accepting it.

Along with generalized anxiety disorder, I also have diabetes. I don’t talk about diabetes as much. Diabetes and anxiety clash…a lot. They both cause a lot of the same physical symptoms that I’m mostly comfortable with. What I mean by comfortable, is that I know the cycle of my symptoms, so they usually don’t cause me to freak out like they used to. So keep in mind that I’m used to certain physical manifestations of anxiety alongside diabetes side effects. Those are normal for me…

Over the years, I’ve discussed being anxious about health related issues. This has been a thing long before I was diagnosed with anxiety. What I’ve realized in 2022, is that this isn’t just anxiety over health. It’s a whole new beast that I didn’t see coming. 

Hypochondria is the constant fear of having a serious or life threatening illness with few or no symptoms. Hypochondria is now known as illness anxiety disorder. I feel like so many things underwent a name change in the late 90s early 2000s. As it is in the nature of my generalized anxiety disorder to feel physical symptoms, I'm not surprised that illness anxiety disorder presented similarly. 

I first referred to myself as a hypochondriac in January of this year. I casually slid it into a conversation with a coworker who has heard me say things like "it's probably breast cancer" or "maybe it's a brain tumor". Then a few months later, Dro referred to me as a hypochondriac and in the same week it came up with a friend. I was very comfortable in these conversations, but on the inside, I was starting to feel crazy. I was starting to think that this is never going to end. It’s always going to be something. For about a month, I felt physically ill in ways I’ve never felt before. I went to the doctor and felt kinda dismissed. That’s usually the case. I never feel like my doctors actually hear me. I like my doctor and I trust her, but part of my health anxiety is feeling like the doctors are missing something. My doctor referred me to all these specialists who kept telling me that everything checked out. I didn’t believe them and if we’re being real, I still don’t. Diabetes and anxiety could contribute to some of the things that were happening, but not enough of them to convince me not to worry. 

The conversation I had about this with my therapist fucked me up. I explained to her about how I thought the doctors were missing something and she said “Do you want to be sick?” As I was shaking my head no, I had the realization that if I’m not actually physically sick, then my brain is doing this to me. So my options are actually being physically sick with some illness or being so mentally fucked up that my brain created these symptoms. Lose-Lose. 

I was feeling like I couldn't trust my body. It was such a let down because I relied on my body when I knew I couldn’t rely on my brain. I know my brain lies to me. I wasn’t prepared for my body to follow suit in this way. I mean technically, it's still my brain letting me down, but me and my body had an agreement to only feel certain things so I would know not to worry too much. Things got worse before they got better because not knowing whether I was physically sick or mentally sick was making me more anxious. Like seriously those are two shitty options. 

While all of these things are happening inside my brain and my body, I still have to carry on with my regular life. I still have to go to work, talk to my friends, take care of my home as if everything is normal. It gets to be too overwhelming to keep talking about it all the time, so I don't do it as much. I share about the doctors appointments and things, but it's hard to tell someone how miserable you feel all the time. Like damn girl, is this all you got going on? No, but it's the most prevalent. 

My therapist referred me to a psychologist for a true diagnosis and proper treatment. I’m excited about the possibility of getting the proper support. It feels good to know that this is a thing. It has a name. It has treatment options. The big thing here is that I had to be honest with myself about how bad this is so that I could open myself up to getting the help that I need. Yall, I be over here stressed tf out thinking I got something and it doesn't have to be this way. Mental health issues are nothing to play with.

As if things weren’t already bad, I’m also coping with going back to school with high covid numbers and monkey pox being declared a global health emergency. That’ll be interesting. 

I ain’t gon lie, this one was probably the hardest to share out of the whole series. I know you guys only have two, but I know what the rest of them are lol

​Thanks for reading!