Surrounded by Image Protectors

It feels like I’ve just managed to surround myself with people who choose to protect their image over the relationship — every single time.

And it’s demoralizing.

There’s a point where you stop feeling confused by it and just start seeing it for what it is: a pattern. One I’ve probably been unconsciously participating in for years. I can feel the younger part of me hoping — each time — that maybe this time, if I get it just right, they’ll stay. They’ll see me. We’ll finally get the connection I always wanted.

But it never quite works like that.

Instead, I find myself stuck in relationships with people who deflect, gaslight, minimize, defend, or disappear the moment any truth gets too uncomfortable. People who would rather uphold an image — of themselves, of the family, of how things “should” be — than actually sit in the mess with me and work through it.

And deep down, I think I pick them. Not consciously. But because there’s a repetition compulsion driving it — some old childlike attempt to rewrite the story by getting it right this time.

But the truth is, I’m exhausted by it.

No matter how much compassion or insight I bring, I cannot make someone want to grow. I cannot pull someone into intimacy if their entire nervous system is designed to run from it. I can’t fix people. And that’s not my failure — it’s my freedom.

The healthier choice, the one I’m slowly learning to lean into, is to choose people who don’t need fixing in the first place. People who meet me where I am. People who can hold truth, and presence, and discomfort without turning it into blame or silence.

At first, those people might feel boring — or even unfamiliar. Because my nervous system was shaped in chaos. It’s still learning that safety isn’t something I have to earn. That love isn’t conditional. That being seen doesn’t have to come with a cost.

And that shift — from trying to be chosen, to choosing what’s healthy — is slow. And sacred. And messy.

But I’m in it now. No longer willing to tolerate the old. Not yet fully anchored in the new. But aware. And awake. And choosing differently, one boundary at a time.

That’s something.