Nicholas Gomez's Blog - Posts Tagged "dating"

Even though being alone never makes me feel better it’s always what I seek out. I think, fuck, I don’t want to have to explain to everyone what’s going on. I’m ashamed of what’s going on. I’m so afraid to not look put-together all the time that I isolate myself from those who care the most. I tell myself no one can know about my flaws.

Penny falls back and asks me if I’m doing alright.

The truth pours out of me involuntarily. I regret everything I say seconds after it leaves my mouth. And Penny just listens. Then Ben and Evan listen. Until the three of them are walking by my side, hearing me tell them about Nat’s panic attack and how weak I feel for not being able to go a day without her.

“But you have,” Penny says. “It’s almost been a full day since we picked you up and you’re still here with us.”

“Yeah.”

“Don’t worry about us,” she adds. “I mean, obviously we wish you weren’t feeling this way, but you’re not doing as bad as you may feel. Chin up, friend. We love you.”

I’m glad it’s out in the open but still, I only feel sadder from it. More in my head than I was before. Their perception of who I am is no longer in my control. They know the truth. They know how attached Nat and I are and how bad this relationship is for both of us. Even if they’re not saying it, I can tell they wish I wasn’t here.

Or maybe that’s the voice in my head.

Fuck, man, being vulnerable sucks.


When I was younger I used to cry a lot. At the time, a narrative was built around the crying. I was called a spoiled brat by my family. Often. Nuance didn’t exist regardless of the situation. It was always my fault when I cried and thus, my responsibility to figure out what I had done wrong.

My dad was rarely around to discipline me, so that role fell on my mom, who was dealing with a separation from my dad and the pain of having been cheated on. She would say to me, “You can cry all you want, but go do it in your room! And don’t come out until you realize what you’ve done!”

I never learned anything from those interactions. I just went to my bedroom and cried for hours. I cried until I forgot what I was crying about.

What followed the sadness was an intense feeling of guilt and shame. I feared leaving my bedroom because I was embarrassed of what I had done—even though I didn’t know what that was. All I knew was that I had been bad and gotten punished for it. I didn’t get to spend time with family when I was bad.

And the lack of unconditional love I received as a child affected me on a deep level.

It taught me that love and attention are the same thing. It showed me that there is not enough love to go around for all of us. That we must fight for what little love we are given. Protect it out of fear that we won’t find another source.

I also developed shame around feeling angry or sad because anytime I felt that way my family rolled their eyes like, “Here goes Nick being a brat again.” As if all of my anger and sadness boiled down to one word.

What that looks like in present day is what you read in the excerpt above. I hate making mistakes. I hate hurting other people. I hate talking about my feelings and being vulnerable with others because at my core I believe that I am a burden, or that I’ll be rejected for doing so.

The times that I do open up to others I become hyperaware of the fact that I am asking them for support. Intellectually I understand that we all deserve love and support, but on an emotional level, I don’t feel that way. I don’t feel lovable and I don’t feel loved.

Even when friends, family, and loved ones go out of their way to show me that they love me.

The dots just never connect for me because I bypass the feeling of love and jump to deep fear of abandonment.

This has been my greatest struggle in life.

All three of my past romantic relationships suffered because of this. At times I was jealous, possessive, enraged, spiteful, a liar, a cheater, and a child.

Throughout most of those relationships I acted out of fear. I never accepted that these women loved me. And if I felt the relationship had gone on too long, I didn’t act on that feeling and end the relationship because I was scared that nobody else could love me like they did. So I endured miserable conditions and thought that was better than the unknown—than being alone.

At work I have always suffered from impostor syndrome.

I worry that I cannot make mistakes or else my supervisors will realize what they knew all along. That I’m a fraud and that I don’t deserve to work there.

When I was promoted at my current job and told I now had a free shift meal every day, I wondered when they would take the privilege away from me. I still wonder that.

In social situations I become anxious because I don’t want to feel rejected. I don’t want to stand around, alone, while everyone moves around the room, hops from group to group, interaction to interaction. I did that in high school and I was shamed for it.

“You’re not going to dance?” my friends would ask. “Come on! Don’t just sit there the whole time like a bore!”

It’s like a catch-22 in a way. When I become anxious, I tend to avoid conversations or keep them brief. Then I think, “Well, everyone in this room thinks you’re an asshole because you aren’t talking to anyone.” And that anxious thought convinces me to flee the scene, thus creating an actual asshole out of me, the kind that never says goodbye and doesn’t ask about your day.

But one won’t change until the other does.

And it’s a process. A slow one at that, but a process nonetheless.

Every day I write in my gratitude journal that I am lovable and loved.

I don’t feel that I am.

But I believe that, in time, I will.